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Sixty-five combatants have been killed after Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a renewed offensive on Marib, the last government stronghold in the country’s oil-rich north, a military official said on Thursday.
The Iran-backed rebels attacked pro-government positions south of the strategic city, making progress despite losing dozens of fighters in coalition air strikes.
Several troops from the Syrian regime’s Fourth Division were killed and wounded on Monday as they tried to advance on the besieged Daraa Al-Balad area of Daraa city in southern Syria.
Abu Al-Baraa Al-Hourani, a member of the Free People of Houran media activist group, told The New Arab’s Arabic-language service that “violent clashes with automatic weapons broke out at midday on Monday, between young men from Daraa on the one hand and Fourth Division militias supported by Iran on the other”.
Syrian government rockets hit two villages in the last rebel stronghold in northwestern Syria on Thursday, killing at least nine civilians, including three children, rescue workers and a war monitor said.
The U.N. Children’s agency confirmed three children were killed, calling it a “terrifying sign” that violence is returning to the area that has been under a cease-fire for over a year.
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Heavy fighting has raged between forces of Yemen’s internationally recognised government and Houthi rebels in central Bayda province but pro-government forces have made rapid gains.
Government forces and allied tribesmen, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, reclaimed large swathes of territory in the province, according to Moammar Al Iryani, Yemen’s information minister.
Syrian government forces and rebels exchanged shellfire in north-western Syria on Monday, killing at least 10 people, most of them in rebel-held areas, state media reported.
The area has had increasing violence in recent weeks, between government troops and insurgents on the edge of the last rebel stronghold in the north-western province of Idlib.