Yemeni army forces, backed by allied fighters from Popular Committees, have made more significant gains in the country’s oil-producing central province of Ma’rib, seizing control over a strategic region south of the provincial capital.
Faraan: Yemen News Portal website, citing informed sources requesting anonymity, reported on Thursday that the Yemeni troops and their allies engaged in fierce clashes with Saudi-backed militants supporting Yemen’s fugitive president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and could take control of Falaj region in the Wadi Obaida district.
Yemen Shabab TV channel, affiliated to the Salafist and so-called al-Islah political party, later broadcast the funeral of dozens of Saudi mercenaries and militants who had been killed within past hours by the Yemeni army troops and Popular Committees forces.
Military sources said the Yemeni army forces and their allies have advanced towards important areas south and east of the Wadi Obaida district.
They added that the forces are now positioned on the outskirts of the southern neighborhoods of Ma’rib city, after humiliating retreat of large numbers of Saudi mercenaries to the city center.
‘Saudi forces withdraw from various Hudaydah areas’
Elsewhere in Yemen’s western coastal province of Hudaydah, Saudi-led coalition forces and their allied Takfiri militants completely withdrew from ten areas in the southern and eastern districts of the province.
Local sources told Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television news network that the forces have left the areas for the Mocha district in neighboring Ta’izz province.
