Houthi fighters and their allied army units continue to clash with local militias in the southern Yemeni city of Aden. Eyewitnesses report gun battles and heavy shelling near the city’s port.
A militia source says nearly 50 combatants on both sides died, adding to the more than 500 people the U.N. says have been killed in two weeks of fighting.
The Houthi forces already control the capital Sanaa and have been battling to take Aden, a last foothold of fighters loyal to Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Eleven days of air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition of mainly Gulf air forces hasn’t stopped them.
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia launched the air strikes on March 26 to try to turn back the Shi’ite Houthis and restore some of Hadi’s crumbling authority.
But so far the fighting has failed to inflict any decisive defeat on the Houthis.
This, as the growing death toll and humanitarian suffering raises the alarm among the U.N. and aid groups.
Ventuno