AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s army on Wednesday announced it had partially broken a six-year siege of the southern city of Taiz by the Iran-backed Houthis.
Spokesman Col. Abdul Basit Al-Baher told Arab News that troops had seized control of several mountain locations on the western edges of the city and reopened a road to western areas on the Red Sea.
For the first time in years, soldiers from the Taiz axis met other government troops from the Giants Brigades (military unit fighting for the government) in a liberated area in Al-Wazyia after breaking the last Houthi line of defense that had long-separated them.
AL-MUKALLA: The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Yemen, Katharina Ritz, has been criticized for meeting Iran s representative in Houthi-controlled Sanaa.
Yemen’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Awadh bin Mubarak said Monday that the government had protested the meeting as Hasan Irlu was a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and had snuck into the country illegally last year.
“He (Irlu) is not an ambassador to Yemen,” the minister told Arab News. “He has not been accredited and entered Yemen illegally. She is accredited in Yemen and is not entitled to meet with a member of the Revolutionary Guard to discuss matters related to Yemen.”
AL-MUKALLA: Two soldiers were killed and eight were wounded when an explosion ripped through a convoy of local military leaders in Yemen’s port city of Aden on Thursday, a local security official told Arab News.
A car that was parked on the road and rigged with explosives hit the convoy of Nabil Al-Mashushi and Mohsen Al-Wali, commanders of separatist military units in the Aden district of Madinat Asha ab.
Al-Mashushi appeared in a video after the explosion, saying he and his friend Al-Wali were unhurt and vowing to punish those who plotted the attack.
Al-Mashushi led separatist forces during a major offensive to liberate western coastal areas from the Iran-backed Houthis in 2017.
AL-MUKALLA, Yemen: The latest round of prisoner swap talks between the internationally recognized government of Yemen and the Iran-backed Houthis have stalled due to the Houthi movement’s refusal to release journalists and politicians, Yemeni and UN officials said on Sunday.
Brokered by the UN, the talks in the Jordanian capital, Amman, were resumed last month with the aim of releasing 301 prisoners on both sides. This built on previous talks that secured the swap of more than 1,000 prisoners in October.
The Yemeni government accused the Houthis of ruining the talks by refusing to release abducted journalists and prominent politicians and military commanders, and demanding that the government release their fake prisoners.