SANAA, Aug 5: Thirty-four soldiers and 18 militants were killed in 24 hours as the military battled its way through a key stronghold of a rebel Muslim preacher in northwestern Yemen, military and medical sources said on Thursday.

Army forces launched a fresh offensive on Tuesday on the mountainous Maran district of Saada province where Hussein Badr Eddin al Huthi and thousands of his supporters are besieged, they said.

The military suffered heavy casualties because its troops were much more exposed than the entrenched rebels, the sources said. A military source said about 30 Huthi militants surrendered on Thursday, a day after 20 others gave themselves up to the advancing army.

Witnesses said the army crossed Al Sharaf mountain before advancing half-way across Al Hikmi mountain, the highest peak in the Maran area and a key stronghold of Huthi and his followers.

They said the army was using tanks, armored vehicles and cannons in the offensive, while the militants were putting up fierce resistance with sniper fire, machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades.

The military sources said the army expected an early end to the rebellion after the latest offensive. The onslaught came after the failure of new mediation efforts to negotiate the surrender of Huthi and his followers, the sources added.

The mediation efforts had been carried out by a group of opposition leaders, preachers and tribal chiefs at the behest of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. A previous mediation effort on June 28 led by MPs, including one of Huthi's brothers, was abandoned after the preacher refused to surrender.

One of the MPs involved in the abortive effort, however, accused elements of the army of undermining efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully. The Yemeni president has accused Huthi and his supporters of being "foreign agents" seeking to foment sectarian strife, and has promised the preacher a fair trial if he surrenders.

But Huthi said last month that the conflict was a result of his anti-US stand and accused President Saleh of seeking "to please the United States at the expense of his own people".

During the Friday prayers, Huthi followers often chant slogans against Israel, the United States and call for a boycott of American goods. The clashes between the army and Huthi's supporters, estimated to number as many as 3,000 armed men, have left at least 340 people dead since June 18 but the full toll could be higher as the army has given few details of its own casualties.

Authorities have offered a 55,000-dollar reward for information leading to Huthi's capture. Huthi, a preacher and former MP from the Zaidi community, heads the Faithful Youth organization, formed in 1997 as a breakaway from the opposition movement Al Haq. The Zaidis are a moderate Shia sect, dominant in northwestern Yemen, near the Saudi border. -AFP