Yemen’s army claims over 1,500 Houthi casualties, attacks Sanaa

SANAA, Oct 3: Loud explosions have been reported in Yemen’s Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, while missile, drone and artillery attacks targeted Houthi positions across the country, according to the military.

Colonel Majed Abdullah al-Nazili, Yemen’s military spokesman, wrote on X on Saturday that the armed forces are carrying out a military operation “on legitimate vital military targets in Sanaa”, adding that they are “capable of executing strategic attacks against the Houthis”.

Earlier, al-Nazili said Yemen’s internationally recognised government forces carried out nearly 500 military operations, killing or wounding 1,540 Houthi rebels in the past 24 hours.

Most of the casualties were in the governorate of Taiz, where the operations halted the Houthi advance, al-Nazili said. The government-held city of Taiz has become a focal point of the renewed fighting.

The army spokesman did not mention any casualties among government forces.

Al Jazeera’s Maha Ali, reporting from Yemen’s Taiz, said the region is seeing continued escalation and intense fighting across several fronts around the city, with some of the fiercest fighting happening on its western outskirts.

The Houthis have used an exceptionally heavy volume of fire during the assault, she noted, adding that the sound of continuing artillery fire, particularly from the Houthi side, targeting western areas, could still be heard.

Residents are appealing for evacuation as the shelling continues, Ali reported, adding that there have been civilian casualties in the fighting, including from a shell that hit a residential area in Dhubab, killing a baby who died from shrapnel injuries.

On the Samea front, she said, the Houthis made advances on Friday in the mountainous area and fierce clashes are continuing there today between government forces and the Houthis.

Several field sources told Ali that large numbers of residents have left Samea, something, she said, that had not happened on this scale in more than a decade.

On Saturday, the army’s media official Ammar al-Sami’i told Al Jazeera that the government had closed the al-Houban crossing in Taiz.

The crossing had previously been closed for nine years and was later reopened to civilians in 2024 for “humanitarian reasons”, Sami’i said, as the road is one of Yemen’s most important connections between territory held by the opposing sides. It connects Houthi-held al-Houban to government-held Taiz city.

Sami’i said security reasons are behind the closure, following an attempt by the Houthis to infiltrate Taiz via the road, attacks in the vicinity and a general military build-up.

A fragile truce struck between the government and the Houthis in 2022 collapsed in July this year, and fighting in Yemen has escalated significantly since then.�" AL JAZEERA