Heavy fighting was reported along the main highway connecting the vital aid port of Hodeidah and the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, as the Shi’ite Houthi movement tried to reopen the supply line connecting the two.
Hodeidah is the main aid port for food and medicine into Yemen, and the last aid port controlled by the Houthis. Pro-Saudi forces, intending to conquer the city, have surrounded it, cutting off all supply lines into, and away from ,the port.
Pro-Saudi forces claim to have repelled the Houthis along the highway after protracted fighting, and say at least 70 Houthis were killed. They did not offer any reports on their own casualties suffered in the fight.
The Saudi-backed officials credited the scrambling of reinforcements into the area as the reason they managed to hold off the Houthis’ push. The Houthis have not offered any comments on the matter, so it is unclear if this was a one-off counteroffensive, or the start of a general attempt to retake the highway.
Well that gives us the view from Saudi Arabia.
There are so many confusing things in this article. For one, we do not have “Yemeni” forces fighting “Houthis”. We have Saudis and mostly mercenary army fighting Yemeniis — as we keep on calling them Houthis. North Yemen was a country for a ling time, and had a dynasty that was iver 1,000 years old when toppled in the sixties. So, is there a chance we stop calling invaders “Yemenis” and real Yemenis — Houthis.
Another mystery — fighting along Hodeidah – Sana’a highway. Apart from a very small stretch aling Red Sea, the road abruptly climbs thousands of feet in a very short and intense climb. Higher ground has always advantage, so I cannot see where and how would Saudi forces be able to cut iff the road. Sure, anything csn happen as a result of long range artillery or bombing, but holding ground around Hodeidah would be hard for mercenary army stretched thin. It is an unbelievable savagdry what is being done to these people — yet a death of one journalist has suddenly moved so many?