ADEN // Aden received its first commercial flight in four months on Thursday, bringing home refugees who had fled to Djibouti, while a Red Cross plane brought captured pro-government soldiers from Sanaa for the first prisoner exchange with Houthi rebels.
“At around 1pm local time, a Yemenia Airways plane arrived, carrying 150 citizens who had fled the city by boat to Djibouti back home,” said Muneef Al Zuhairi, a militia commander and deputy director of the city’s airport.
Airlines resuming flights to Aden will do so under the direct supervision of the Arab coalition, said Yemeni presidential spokesperson Moktar Al Rahbi.
Heavy fighting had rendered Aden’s airport and seaports mostly inaccessible after the Houthis pushed into the city on March 26, triggering a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab states, including the UAE, to launch an attempt to restore the international recognised government of president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi.
However, the city was seized by fighters opposed to the Houthis last month, and the country’s exiled government in Saudi Arabia says it will use it as a base to run the country.
Tribal and military sources said on Thursday that Saudi Arabia had sent new military equipment including tanks into Yemen to support Hadi loyalists.
“Dozens of tanks, armoured vehicles and personnel carriers, as well as hundreds of Yemeni soldiers trained in Saudi Arabia, arrived in Yemen overnight” via the Wadia border post in the north of the country, a Yemeni military source said.
“These military reinforcements came from Saudi Arabia’s Sharura region and are intended for the popular resistance and the national army,” another military source said, referring to Mr Hadi’s forces.
Also on Thursday, a Red Cross plane landed in Aden carrying 30 southern fighters who had been detained on the battlefield and moved to Sanaa, Mr Al Zuhairi said. They will be exchanged for seven Houthi military commanders held in Aden.
It was the first prisoner exchange involving an international organisation and may signal progress toward ending the conflict which has killed more than 4,000 people.
Anti-Houthi forces continued to make gains on Thursday, fully surrounding the provincial capital of Lahej province, Zinjibar, north-east of Aden and massing their forces before an expected push toward the central city of Taez.
A Saudi Arabian soldier named Yahya Miteb Shamr was killed after being hit by a projectile in the country’s Jizan region along the border with Yemen, the coalition’s Joint Forces Command announced on Thursday.
* Reuters, Wam, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press