Yemeni army says it carried out 468 operations against Houthis on 3 fronts

The Yemeni army said Wednesday that its forces carried out 468 operations targeting Houthi fighters and military equipment on three fronts across the country, claiming that hundreds of the group’s members were killed or injured.

In a post on US social media company X, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Majed Abdullah al-Nazili said the operations targeted Houthi fighters and military equipment on the eastern and Al-Bayda fronts in central Yemen, as well as the Al-Mansoura front in Al-Wazi’iyah in the southwest.

“These operations resulted in the killing and injury of hundreds of militia members and the destruction of their military equipment and vehicles,” he said, without providing further details.

Al-Nazili accused the Houthis of continuing to “target civilians and civilian property, including educational facilities, in a desperate attempt to break the Yemeni people’s will to restore the state and reject its extremist and destructive project.”

He said the attacks “constitute a grave violation of international humanitarian law and the principles of civilian protection.”

The Houthis did not immediately comment on the army’s claims.

The statement came as fighting between government forces and the Houthis intensified on several fronts, including in Taiz and Lahj provinces near the Bab al-Mandab Strait in southwestern Yemen, Marib in the east, Al-Jawf in the north and Al-Bayda in central Yemen.

The latest fighting is part of a military escalation that began in early July, described as the largest since the relative calm that followed an April 2022 truce.

Yemen has been mired in conflict since the Houthis seized Sanaa and several provinces in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in 2015 in support of Yemen’s internationally recognized government.