Saudi-backed Yemeni troops and fighters control Aden

While repair work was going to be carried out to fix damage done to the airport during fighting in the past few months, the airport’s staff was expected preparing to receive daily aid-carrying aircraft starting soon, he explained.

Saudi-backed militiamen meanwhile exchanged heavy artillery fire with their Houthi foes in the northern approaches to Aden on Wednesday.

Last Friday, exiled Vice President Khaled Bahah said on his Facebook account that Aden had been liberated and that the government will try “to restore life” to the city.

The foreign intervention and war raging across the country have killed more than 3,600 people.

The source said the Yemeni army and popular committees mounted a shelling attack on a command center in al-Tawahi district in Aden on Thursday and managed to kill a number of military officers from the UAE and a top commander of forces loyal to fugitive President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi in the region, Saba state news agency reported. Aden has suffered especially, with acute shortages of food, medicine and fuel. “WFP is working to channel food through Aden to people in need of humanitarian assistance particularly in Yemen’s southern governorates, which are largely inaccessible because of fighting”, a WFP spokesman said.

The militiamen said they were advancing toward Anad air base, Yemen’s largest, 60 km (40 miles) north of Aden, and were close to linking up with other anti-Houthi fighters nearing the facility from its northern end.

“We’re in an operation to complete the extension of our control over the city of Aden and to confront the Houthi presence at its entrances”, a leader in a local militia told Reuters by phone.

However, Saudi Arabia did not rule out using force if Houthi militants continued their advance in Yemen.