On Friday, Khaled Bahah, Yemen’s vice-president and prime minister, declared that Aden had been “liberated” from the Houthis and allied forces loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Moreover, Yemeni loyalist forces said they advanced Monday into the last district of the southern port city of Aden still held by Iran-backed rebels, seeking to flush out the remaining insurgents. A few ministers in the government of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi have returned to Aden in the past several days and others are expected to fly-in from exile in Saudi Arabia during coming weeks if the military situation holds.
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Although the Southern Resistance and other local groups are backed by Hadi and his government in Riyadh, it is not clear whether they would eventually support his reinstatement.
The Huthi Shiite rebels, who overran Sanaa last September, also lost 11 fighters in other attacks in the capital overnight, medics and witnesses said.
Shelling by Houthi and pro-Saleh forces in the Dar Saad district of Aden on Sunday, which killed at least 43 people, was indiscriminate and targeted an area where many displaced people live, the worldwide aid group Medecins sans Frontieres said. Al-Maashiq presidential palace in the downtown district of Crater remains in Houthi control. Five were killed in a car bombing against a police station in the Al-Hassaba district in the north of the city.
Clashes, however, have remained ongoing on the outskirts of the city, which is considered the country’s commercial and economic capital.
More than 3,200 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in fighting across Yemen since Saudi-led airstrikes began in March, the United Nations said.
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The Houthi takeover prompted Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies in March to launch an air coalition, which for the last four months has pounded Houthi positions across the country.
