Yemeni army says it targeted Houthis in hundreds of strikes, killing 700 | News from the Houthis

Yemen’s military says it has carried out hundreds of strikes against the capital, Sanaa, and other areas controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis, as the battle for control of the country’s most populous regions intensifies.

Col. Majed Abdullah al-Nazili, a spokesman for Yemen’s internationally recognized government forces, said Saturday that the army “performed 257 precision targeting operations” against Houthi sites, movements and military capabilities.

The army used “fighter jets, drones, artillery, missiles and rocket launchers,” he added in a post on X.

Al-Nazili said initial estimates indicate the operations killed at least 700 Houthi rebels and destroyed “strategic and high-value military targets,” including 170 combat vehicles and heavy equipment.

The army spokesperson did not report any casualties among government forces.

The strikes “had a direct impact on the fighting capacity of the (Houthi) militia and limited its ability to continue its attacks against civilians in their homes and villages,” he said.

Saturday’s operations targeted Sanaa, Midi, Baqim and the front lines of al-Jawf, Marib, al-Bayda and Lahij, with the most intense operational efforts concentrated around Taiz, al-Nazili added.

On Friday, al-Nazili said Yemeni government forces carried out nearly 500 military operations, killing or injuring 1,540 Houthi rebels in 24 hours.

Taiz, hotbed of clashes

The government-held city of Taiz became the focal point for renewed fighting.

Al Jazeera’s Maha Ali, reporting Saturday from Taiz, said the region is seeing continued escalation and intense fighting on several fronts around the city, with some of the fiercest fighting taking place on its western outskirts.

The Houthis used an exceptionally intense volume of fire during the assault, she noted, adding that the sound of continuous artillery fire, particularly from the Houthi side targeting western areas, could still be heard.

Residents are calling for evacuations as shelling continues, Ali said, adding that there have been civilian casualties in the fighting, including a shell that hit a residential area in Dhubab, killing a baby who died from shrapnel wounds.

On the Samaa front, she said, the Houthis advanced into the mountainous area on Friday, and violent clashes continue there between government forces and rebels. Multiple sources on the ground told Ali that large numbers of residents had left Samaa, something she said had not happened on such a scale in more than a decade.

Following the clashes, Yemeni government forces took control of Samaa Fort, southeast of the city of Taiz, after heavy fighting, the government-run Saba news agency reported.

A military source told Saba that armed forces, supported by local popular resistance fighters from Samaa district, secured the fort after “heavy fighting”, leaving dozens of Houthi fighters killed or injured while others fled.

Closure of a key border post

On Saturday, army media chief Ammar al-Sami’i told Al Jazeera that the government had closed the al-Houban crossing into Taiz.

The crossing had been closed for nine years and was later reopened to civilians in 2024 for “humanitarian reasons”, Sami’i explained, as the road is one of Yemen’s most important connections between territories held by opposing parties. It connects Houthi-held al-Houban to the government-held city of Taiz.

Sami’i explained that security reasons were behind the closure, following a Houthi attempt to infiltrate Taiz by road, attacks in the surrounding area and a general military buildup.

A fragile truce agreed between the government and the Houthis in 2022 collapsed in July this year, and fighting in Yemen has intensified significantly since then.

In mid-September, the Houthis invaded parts of western Yemen, seizing the port city of Mocha and key strategic islands in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

Since then, anti-Houthi forces have largely stabilized the front lines.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced since fighting resumed.

Yemen has been mired in civil war since the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa in 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government to retreat to Aden.