At least 61 combatants have been killed in clashes in Yemen’s flashpoint of Hodeida, and dozens of wounded have been taken to hospitals outside the city, medics and a military source said yesterday.
Medics in the Red Sea city reported that 43 Houthi rebels and nine loyalists were killed in clashes over the past two days.
Another nine loyalist fighters were reported killed by medics at a hospital in government-held Mocha, south of Hodeida. A government military source confirmed the toll.
Photo: AFP
Dozens of wounded rebels were transferred to hospitals in the Sana’a and Ibb governorates, further inland, a source at the Hodeida military hospital said.
A pro-government alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is pushing to seize Hodeida from Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels, who are linked to Iran. More than 400 combatants have been killed in 10 days of clashes in Hodeida, a city on the coast that is home to the country’s most valuable port.
Government forces have pressed further into the strategic city, on Saturday seizing its main hospital in heavy fighting as they try to advance on Hodeida’s vital docks
Hodeida has been controlled by the Houthis since 2014, when the rebels seized Sana’a, the capital, and a string of port cities.
The WHO estimates that nearly 10,000 people have been killed since 2015, when Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the government’s war against the Houthis, driving the insurgents from the Red Sea coastline, but failing to retake Hodeida.
Other rights groups believe that the toll could be five times as high.
The conflict has triggered what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 14 million Yemenis facing starvation.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS