Fighting between the Shiite Houthi group and forces loyal to Yemen's government left about 30 people killed and scores others injured in the southwestern province of Taiz on Saturday. The intense fighting that continued for two consecutive days for the purpose of capturing the Houthi-controlled presidential compound in Taiz, Xinhua quoted a local military official as saying on condition of anonymity.
The armed forces loyal to Yemen's internationally recognized President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi made ground advances and kicked the Houthi rebels out of the presidential compound, the source said. He added that the Shiite Houthi gunmen also lost control of a key military base near the compound.
According to local medics in different hospitals in Taiz and neighbouring provinces, the fighting left about 20 Houthi gunmen and 10 government soldiers killed. Media outlets close to Hadi's government said that "over the past few days, the army has managed to clear several strategic sites and locations that were under the Shiite Houthis' control, namely the Central Bank and Faculty of Medicine buildings in Taiz."
A spokesman of Hadi's forces in Taiz said that the battles are pressing ahead according to the plans set to liberate Taiz with all its installations and all the Yemeni territories. Taiz has, for long, been under total blockade and witnessed indiscriminate shellings by the Shiite Houthis who control most parts of Taiz province.
The Coalition for Humanitarian Relief (CHR) in its new report said that as many as 131 persons were killed and 320 others were injured, including women and children, in Taiz in May, as a result of the Saleh-Houthi militia's military escalation in the province.
Yemen has been suffering from a civil war and a Saudi-led military intervention for around two years. The civil war began after the Houthi militants with support from forces loyal to the former president ousted the UN-backed transitional government and occupied capital Sanaa militarily in September 2014.
The legitimate government controls the south and some eastern parts, while the Houthi-Saleh alliance controls the other parts including the capital Sanaa. The UN has sponsored peace talks between the warring factions several times, but the factions failed to reach common ground.
The civil war, ground battles and airstrikes have already killed more than 10,000 people, half of them civilians, injured more than 35,000 others and displaced over two millions, according to humanitarian agencies.
On the other hand, The United Nations has sounded alarm bells before, but few as dramatic as humanitarian relief coordinator Stephen O'Brien's warning that "millions of Yemeni civilians -- women, children and men -- continue to be exposed to unfathomable pain and suffering" due to famine and the cholera epidemic.
Yemen, a large and impoverished country located at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, has been engulfed in civil war for almost three years. The battle is between Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim rebels, known as Houthis, and the internationally recognized government of President Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The U.S. government has backed a controversially aggressive Saudi Arabia-led offensive against the Houthis.