Dislodging the group will be far more hard now because Yemen’s military has disintegrated during the conflict, said Adam Baron, a Yemen analyst and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
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Eleven people were killed in another air raid on a family house in the northern province of al-Jawf, bordering Saudi Arabia, tribal sources said.
Two Saudi border guards were killed in an attack in the same region by Yemen’s Shiite Huthi rebels on Sunday.
The Guardian last month reported “The air campaign has had limited success and instead has plunged Yemen into a humanitarian crisis with food, fuel and medical shortages”.
Amnesty worldwide blamed all sides for causing the killing and maiming of noncombatants, but focused its latest investigation on eight coalition airstrikes in and near Taiz and Aden that it said had killed 141 civilians, children among them, and ground fighting that killed an additional 68 noncombatants.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat on the condition of anonymity, anti-Houthi activists in Sana’a said the insurgent group has declared a state of emergency in the provinces of Saada and Hajjah on the border with Saudi Arabia.
The Iranian-allied Houthis seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa last September in what they called a revolution against a corrupt government, then took over much of the country.
As the Houthi fighters, along with renegade military units loyal to Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have retreated, they are accused of leaving a deadly trail of mines, improvised explosive devices and booby traps in their wake.
In Yemen, the conflict has cost almost 4,300 lives since March, half of them civilians, according to UN figures, while 80 percent of the country’s 21 million people have been left in need of aid and protection.
“The humanitarian situation is nothing short of catastrophic”, Peter Maurer, president of the global Committee of the Red Cross, said after a recent three-day visit to the battered country.
Aid teams have beforehand complained that a coalition naval blockade has stopped aid provides getting into Yemen.
Saudi Arabia fears a victory for the Houthis would be used by its main regional foe Iran to encircle Gulf states and undermine their security.
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Pentagon officials say 45 U.S. military and intelligence personnel help the coalition evaluate potential bombing targets and calculate blast areas of missiles and bombs in an effort to prevent civilian casualties.
