ADEN: At least 27 people were killed in Yemen’s Taez in clashes between loyalists and rebels and Saudi-led coalition air raids in a day that claimed 52 lives, medics said on Saturday.

Residents said the city in southwest Yemen was rocked by explosions and gunfire overnight as the coalition-backed forces of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi battled pro-Iranian Huthi Shia rebels.

Nineteen rebels, four soldiers of a mechanised army unit loyal to the president and four other pro-Hadi fighters were killed, a medical source said.

On Friday, coalition warplanes carried out heavy air strikes on a presidential palace in Taez, Yemen’s third largest city, and of positions held by special forces units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh who has sided with the Huthis.

Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia last month as the Huthis closed in on his refuge in the southern city of Aden, having advanced from their stronghold in northern Yemen last year to seize the capital Sanaa.

Residents and security sources said rival fighters clashed on Friday night in districts of Aden, while pro-Hadi forces with the support of air strikes held off rebels battling for the past week for control of Aden’s refinery, 15 kilometres to the west of the port city.

“In total, 13 civilians including three women and three pro-Hadi fighters have been killed since Friday in Aden,” regional health chief Al-Khadher Lassouar said.

An aide to the city’s governor said the 16 had been mortally wounded by rebel snipers posted “in their dozens on the roofs of buildings in different parts of the city”.

Meanwhile north of Aden, nine rebels were reported killed on Saturday in two ambushes by pro-Hadi fighters in the north and northwest of Dhaleh city, capital of the province of the same name, a pro-Hadi security spokesman said.

Coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri said that a Saudi soldier was killed the day before in fighting along the frontier in the southwestern Saudi region of Najran.

He was the seventh Saudi soldier to die since the coalition air campaign began on March 26.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2015

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