Yemeni Government Forces Claim Heavy Houthi Losses in Fighting in Taiz and the Kahbub Mountains

Yemen’s government forces claim Houthi militants have suffered heavy losses in ongoing fighting on several fronts, mainly in western Taiz and in the strategic Kahbub mountains overlooking the Bab al-Mandeb strait, Al Jazeera journalist Yousef Mawry reported from Sanaa on Thursday.

According to government sources, Yemeni forces are launching a series of military operations against Houthi positions in Taiz and have repelled many of the group’s attempts to infiltrate government positions near Bab al-Mandeb. The area is under Houthi control, but government forces say they are sending brigade after brigade and acting “with care but with precision.”

This is not a face-to-face confrontation, but a long campaign of operations in mountainous terrain, the sources stress. In parallel, government forces report they downed a drone flying over the Kahbub mountains’ airspace and captured two Houthi fighters on the al-Mudaraba front, with the support of the Southern Giants Brigades.

The fighting comes at the height of the battle for the Bab al-Mandeb strait, one of the world’s most important maritime trade arteries, which the Houthis control and where commercial traffic has almost completely stopped.

Source: Al Jazeera