Last month a British parliamentary committee announced that it planned to investigate allegations that weapons sold by United Kingdom firms to Saudi Arabia – last year, those sales totaled $4.2 billion – were being used to commit war crimes in Yemen.
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In Mukalla, government troops were backed by special forces from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as coalition air strikes, commanders said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency.
Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in Abyan province advanced towards Zinjibar and the neighboring town of Jaar, the sources said. The Yemeni army also succeeded in taking control of the Mina al-Dhaba oil field north of the city of Ash Shih, located east of Mukalla, and the global airport next to the city.
Fifteen fighters loyal to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) were killed in the clashes, residents and a military source said, while a drone strike killed two others further north. AQAP has taken advantage of chaos in Yemen since its civil war began a year ago to win control over swathes of southern and eastern Yemen, creating a local government there and introducing services.
Twelve Al Qaeda militants and three soldiers died in the fighting, a military official said.
Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said on Friday firming up an April 11 cease-fire was essential to the success of the hard-won peace negotiations in Kuwait.
Local officials said dozens of armoured vehicles and hundreds of troops are gathered in Ramah, around 70 km (44 miles) north of Mukalla in preparation for a ground push.
He said he had contacted Saudi Arabia about the coalition air strikes and they had said the raids were ordered only in response to ceasefire violations by the rebels.
In recent months, al-Qaeda has exploited the ongoing conflict between the central government and the Shia Houthi group to bolster its influence in the country’s south.
Both sides in Yemen’s civil war, in which a tentative truce has been in place for weeks pending the result of peace talks under way in Kuwait, say they regard AQAP as a threat.
The offensive by the coalition forces was aimed at recapturing areas that were held by the jihadist terrorists. The Houthis took over the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014, and the US -backed coalition began airstrikes against them in March 2015.
Turkish artillery fire from the border near Kilis town toward northern Syria, in Kilis, Turkey on February 16, 2016. More than 3,000 of the dead are civilians, with the coalition accused of committing war crimes during its campaign, which has also created a major humanitarian crisis.
These figures could not be independently verified.
Ankara also allows United States jets to use its air base in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group in Syria.
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The inter-Yemeni peace negotiations in Kuwait opened late on Thursday.
