Page 8 - AT

A8 WORLD NEWS
Monday 12 noveMber 2018

Fighting rages street-to-street in Yemen’s key port city

By AHMED AL-HAJ
Associated Press
SANAA, Yemen (AP) —
Street battles raged on
Sunday in several areas of
Yemen’s contested port
city of Hodeida, where a
U.S.-backed, Saudi-led co-
alition is trying to drive out
Iran-backed Shiite rebels,
officials said.
They say airstrikes from
warplanes and Apache
attack helicopters shook
residential neighborhoods
throughout the day, while
ground forces clashed
around the university in the
city’s south, as well as al-
Thawra and May 22 hospi-
tals to the east.
Residents said they heard
heavy gunfire and saw
smoke rising from both ar- In this Dec. 6, 2017 file photo, Houthi Shiite rebels inspect the rubble of the Republican Palace that
eas, with several military was destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sanaa, Yemen.
vehicles on fire near the Associated Press
university. as Houthis, who toppled
Intense fighting around al- the internationally recog-
Thawra Hospital blocked nized government.
access to it for hours, while A Saudi-led coalition allied
rebels retook the May 22 with the government has
hospital after it fell briefly been fighting the Houthis
to the coalition, they said. since 2015 in an attempt
Photos of damaged hospi- to restore the mostly exiled
tal buildings have been cir- government to power.
culating on social media. The war has killed an esti-
Closer to the port facilities, mated 10,000 people, and
the gateway for vital hu- left around two thirds of
manitarian aid, rebel gun- Yemen’s population of 27
men occupied one the million relying on aid, with
country’s largest flour mills more than 8 million at risk of
and posted fighters on its starvation.
rooftop, one official add- Doctors have reported
ed. several civilians including
He said efforts are ongoing children killed since the lat-
to evacuate workers inside est offensive on Hodeida
the site he feared could began on November 1,
now be targeted by air- shortly after the U.S. called
strikes. for a cease-fire by the end
Medical officials in the of the month.q
southern port city of Aden,
a coalition stronghold, say
some public hospitals there
have reached capacity
from a steady flow of war
wounded from contested
fronts across Yemen, and
are refusing to accept
new patients except for
some civilians with critical
wounds.
All officials spoke on condi-
tion of anonymity as they
weren’t authorized to brief
reporters, while the resi-
dents did so for fear over
their safety.
The conflict in Yemen, the
Arab world’s poorest coun-
try, began with the 2014
takeover of the capital, Sa-
naa, by the rebels, known