At least 18 civilians were killed and 70 injured on Wednesday when the Shia Houthi militia shelled a neighborhood in northern Yemen’s Aden province, according to a source from the Popular Resistance, which supports embattled President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. AFP reported that another round of rockets hit mourners as they were burying the dead from the earlier attack. The Saudi-led coalition also struck Houthi forces and Saleh loyalists in Marib province, east of Sanaa, witnesses said.
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Fighting raged Thursday in Yemen s battleground southern city Aden, a day after the United Nations declared its highest level humanitarian emergency in the war-torn country.
Adding more fuel to the fire in Yemen has been a series of coordinated bombings claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), including a auto bomb attack in Sanaa on June 29 that killed at least 28 people.
Twelve Houthis were killed when an airstrike hit an encampment in Shabwa, medical and security officials said.
In Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, Haq says over 21.1 million people need aid, 13 million face “a food security crisis” and 9.4 million have little or no access to water.
Another loyalist source said their forces were trying to round up the escaped prisoners.
There have been repeated jailbreaks in Yemen since the Houthi launched an offensive last summer, overrunning the capital and then much of the rest of the country.
Al Qaida views the Houthis as apostates worthy of death and the two groups are fighting each other in several areas in central Yemen.
In the Saudi Red sea city Jeddah, Yemen’s exiled Prime Minister Khaled Bahah accused the rebels of committing a “war crime” in Aden by attacking residential areas, laying siege on the city, and forcing aid vessels to turn back.
Al-Qaeda’s Yemen arm – regarded by the U.S. as the network’s most risky branch – took advantage of the rebellion to seize the southeastern port city of Mukalla in April where it freed more than 300 inmates, including one of its leaders.
But the IS militant group too has exploited the conflict to enter the fray, carrying out a string of deadly attacks against Houthis targets since March.
A local official accused the rebels of firing on a Qatari aid ship preventing it from docking in the city, which is in desperate need of relief supplies.
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Faiza Abduragib, who said she fled Aden more than three weeks ago when reblels bombed her house, wagged her finger at Cheikh Ahmed and shouted that the United Nations “didn’t do anything” to protect civilians there.
