19 killed as fighting breaks out in Yemen’s Aden
At least 19 people have been killed during clashes between Popular Committees allied with Houthi's Ansarullah movement and al-Qaeda terrorists in the Yemeni city of Aden, officials say.
The clashes broke out as Popular Committee fighters advanced to the key district of Khor Maksar in the southern city of Aden on Wednesday, local government officials and witnesses said.
According to military officials and medical sources, six civilians and 13 Popular Committees fighters were killed during the clashes.
Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed Asiri told reports in the capital Riyadh that the latest Saudi airstrike had targeted the fighters' positions in the southwestern Yemeni provinces of Daleh and Aden, and Shabwah in the south.
"Operations in regions and roads leading to Aden were intensified and have been fruitful," he said during a briefing without giving further details.
Reports also said that Saudi-led airstrikes hit an Air Force base in city of Ma’rib.
Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned about the alarming impact of the ongoing Saudi attacks on the civilian population in Yemen.
“The attacks on hospitals and medical facilities... as well as the deliberate targeting and destruction of private homes, education facilities and basic infrastructure cannot be tolerated,” Mogherini and the EU humanitarian aid commissioner, Christos Stylianides, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia’s air campaign in Yemen started on March 26 in a bid to restore power to fugitive former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
Hadi stepped down in January and refused to reconsider the decision despite calls by the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
On March 25, the embattled president fled Aden, where he had sought to set up a rival power base, to Riyadh after Ansarullah revolutionaries advanced on Aden.
The Ansarullah fighters took control of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, in September 2014 and are currently moving southward. The revolutionaries said the Hadi government was incapable of properly running the affairs of the country and containing the growing wave of corruption and terror.
The Saudi air raids that entered their seventh day on Wednesday have so far claimed the lives of nearly 200 people, including 62 children.
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