ADEN and CAIRO // Fighting across Yemen killed 120 people on Wednesday, mostly civilians, including at least 40 who were fleeing Aden in a boat when it was struck by Houthi shells.
The Iran-allied Houthi rebels battled their way into Aden’s Al Tawahi district, one of the last strongholds of president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi’s supporters, despite airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition.
The rebels strengthened their hold on the city, whose fate is regarded as crucial to both sides in the country’s civil war. Houthis and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh have besieged Aden for weeks.
The historic district of Al Tawahi houses the presidential palace, the main port and Aden’s television station. Locals said there was heavy fighting in the area.
The rebels killed the area’s military commander, Maj Gen Ali Al Hassani, and seized the palace, military officials said.
US forces once used the palace, which overlooks the city’s port entrance, as an operations and training centre for anti-terrorism forces after rebels captured the capital last September.
Experts and trainers left this spring when clashes began in Aden.
Saudi Arabia and its allies, including the UAE, regard the Houthis, who are mostly members of a Shiite sect from Yemen’s northern highlands, as a proxy for Iran.
Coalition airstrikes are aimed at restoring Mr Hadi’s government.
Riyadh accuses Tehran of providing weapons to the Houthis, which Iran denies. “Yemenis don’t need our weapons,” Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said.
The coalition has logistical support from the United States, France and Britain.
Coalition jets have been bombarding the Houthis and Mr Saleh’s forces in and around Aden. They have dropped supplies for local allies and have sent Yemeni soldiers who were retrained in Gulf states to Aden.
Meanwhile, in Yemen’s far north, coalition airstrikes killed 43 people, the Houthis claimed. It came as five Saudi civilians were killed on Tuesday in mortar and rocket fire – the first such deaths in the kingdom since the campaign began on March 26.
More than 30 airstrikes hit Saada province and there was heavy artillery fire from across the border, local sources said.
The conflict has disrupted imports to Yemen, where about 20 million people – or 80 per cent of the population – are estimated to be going hungry, the UN and the Yemen international NGO Forum said.
A shortage of fuel has crippled hospitals and food supplies in recent weeks, and the UN’s World Food Programme has said its fuel needs have leapt from 40,000 litres a month to 1 million litres.
The WFP also dismissed an announcement by the Saudi alliance of a possible truce in some areas to allow for humanitarian supplies, saying a permanent end to hostilities was needed.
Aden residents said at least 30 Houthi gunmen and 10 local fighters died in overnight fighting. Another nine people were killed and 18 were injured in airstrikes on a police academy in Dhamar province, south of the capital Sanaa, the Houthi-run Saba news agency said on Wednesday.
The UN said on Tuesday at least 646 civilians had been killed since coalition airstrikes began, including 131 children, with more than 1,364 civilians wounded.
* Reuters, Bloomberg and Associated Press