Battle of Al-Hudaydah: Saudi-led Forces Bogged Down Outside Port City, Claim New Yemen Missile Intercepted
Local Editor
The Ansarullah revolutionary movement dismissed Saudi reports that the aggression forces seized the airport in Yemen's port city of al-Hudaydah, confirming that the aggressors are on the retreat on all front lines.
Meanwhile, militants and foreign mercenaries armed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are hopelessly attempting to capture the well-defended city and push the Ansarullah out of their sole Red Sea port in the biggest battle of the war.
"A battle of attrition awaits the Saudi alliance which it cannot withstand. The Saudi coalition will not win the battle in Hudaydah," the Ansarullah spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam told Beirut-based Arabic-language al-Mayadeen TV.
In the same respect, the Saudi military claimed on Sunday intercepting a ballistic missile fired from Yemen.
The Ansarullah, however, confirmed via al-Masirah TV that the missile had targeted a military camp in Jizan.
In further details, Saudi aggression forces conducted airstrikes on the airport to support forces attempting to seize it. SABA news agency said warplanes carried out five strikes on al-Hudaydah, the lifeline city to millions of Yemenis.
Ground troops including Emiratis, Sudanese and Yemenis have surrounded the main airport compound.
Mohammed al-Sharif, deputy head of Yemen's civil aviation, said images circulated online about the airport had been taken in October 2016.
A fence shown as proof of the airport's capture is actually situated near the al-Durayhimi district, on a piece of land belonging to a Yemeni lawmaker, he added.
Ahmed Taresh, the head of al-Hudaydah airport, also denied news of the airport's capture, but said that it has been completely destroyed in airstrikes conducted by the Saudi-led coalition.
Abdulsalam, for his part, warned that the Saudi-UAE offensive against the port city would undermine chances for a peaceful settlement of the Yemen crisis.
The rebuttals came after the media office of the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces loyal to ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi said on Twitter that they had "freed al-Hudaydah international airport from the grip of" the Ansarullah.
Reports on Sunday said Saudi-backed forces had been surrounded in the al-Durayhimi Bayt al-Faqih district and at least 40 Saudi mercenaries killed by Yemeni sniper fire over the past two days.
Other sources confirmed that the invading forces had retreated from all fronts in al-Hudaydah's west.
A Yemeni military source said clashes had left 50 Saudi-backed forces dead and destroyed 13 of their armored vehicles in southern al-Hudaydah.
Yemeni forces also managed to confiscate a French or American ship off al-Hudaydah's coast, president of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee Mohammed Ali al-Houthi tweeted.
The UAE, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition waging the war on Yemen, launched the al-Hudaydah assault on Wednesday despite warnings that it would compound the impoverished nation's humanitarian crisis.
Fighting on Saturday closed off the city's northern exit, blocking a key route east to Sana'a and making it harder to transport goods from Yemen's biggest port to mountainous regions.
In a related context, French Le Figaro newspaper reported that French Special Forces are present on the ground in Yemen supporting the ongoing Saudi-led military operation on the Red Sea port city of al-Hudaydah.
The Saturday report cited two military sources but provided no further details as Saudi Arabia claimed that forces under its command had entered the airport in al-Hudaydah.
France, along with the United States and Britain, backs Saudi Arabia in the Yemen conflict and provides weapons to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The French Defense Ministry claimed on Friday that France was studying the possibility of carrying out a mine-sweeping operation to provide access to al-Hudaydah once Saudi Arabia and the UAE had wrapped up their military operations.
Although the ministry stressed that France at this stage had no military operations in the al-Hudaydah region and was not part of the Saudi offensive, Abdulsalam stressed that British and French warships are on standby on Yemen's western coast to launch missile and aerial attacks.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
