Hadi loyalists liberate more ground in Aden

ADEN: Loyalists of Yemen’s President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, buoyed by their recapture of the airport, seized more ground in second city Aden as they pressed their biggest fightback yet against Iran-backed rebels.
The offensive, dubbed Operation Golden Arrow, is the first major advance by the loyalists since Houthi rebels entered the port city in March.
Saudi-led warplanes carried out six raids on rebel positions before dawn, witnesses and military sources said.
Popular Resistance fighters — a southern militia that has been the mainstay of support for Hadi — recaptured the provincial government headquarters in the Mualla district opposite Aden’s main commercial port, militia spokesman Ali Al-Ahmadi said.
They also advanced in Aden’s Crater downtown district, where a presidential palace is located, amid heavy fighting, he added.
And pro-government fighters entered the small commercial port in Mualla itself, near the main port which the rebels had failed to take, according to military sources.
General Fadhl Al-Hasan, leading pro-government forces’ operations in Aden’s west, told AFP that his troops have also captured the coastal road overlooking the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and Djibouti.
The road links Aden to the rebel-held city of Mocha, home to a port near Bab el-Mandeb.
“The Resistance is at the gates of the city of Mocha,” through which rebel military reinforcements used to arrive from northern cities under their control, said Hasan.
On Tuesday, the Popular Resistance, backed by reinforcements freshly trained and equipped in Saudi Arabia, retook the airport and much of the surrounding Khormaksar diplomatic district.
“After the recapture of Khormaksar, there was a collapse in the ranks of the Houthis and their allies,” renegade troops loyal to Hadi’s predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh, Ahmadi said.
It was the defection of the 39th Armored Brigade on March 25 that had enabled the rebels to take the airport.
A Western diplomat in Riyadh said that, if the airport and environs can be secured, it could be used to deliver supplies to loyalist forces.
“This could be the first step to a beachhead,” he said.
The retreating rebels pounded residential districts in the north and east of Aden with Katyusha multiple rocket launchers, provincial officials said.