Araweelo News Network

Saudi-backed militants pose for a picture raising their machine guns near the Red Sea port city of Mucha on April 15, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Mukha(ANN)-More than 40 people have been killed in renewed clashes between fighters from the Houthi Ansarullah movement and Saudi-backed forces near the Yemeni port city of Mukha over the past few days.

Military officials and witnesses at local hospitals said on Sunday that 16 Houthis and seven Saudi-backed militants lost their lives in the scuffles east of Mukha.

Additionally, 20 pro-Saudi militants were slain in a Thursday Houthi strike on a major military base in the southwestern Taʿizz Province, situated some 40 kilometers east of Mukha.

Mukha has been the scene of fierce fighting between the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces and the Houthi fighters in recent months.

Back in February, the pro-Saudi militants said they had seized full control of the strategic Red Sea port.

Meanwhile, a media center affiliated to Ansarullah said 12 Emiratis were killed and 23 others injured in the Yemeni fighter’s missile attack on a UAE military vessel off the coast of Mukha on Saturday. Local sources said the bodies of the slain Emirati nationals were flown to Eritrea’s port city of Assab.

In another development on Saturday, the Yemeni fighters attacked the al-Fariza military base in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern Jizan region.

On Friday, Yemeni army troops, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, managed to seize several strategic military bases and outposts in Jizan in retaliation for almost daily Saudi bombardment of the impoverished nation.

Saudi Arabia has been leading a brutal military campaign against Yemen for more than two years to eliminate the Houthi movement and reinstall Riyadh-friendly former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The Saudi military campaign, however, has failed to achieve its goals.

The protracted war has already killed over 12,000 Yemenis, with the US and the UK providing the bulk of weapons used by Saudi forces and giving coordinates for airstrikes which have killed many civilians.

The Saudi offensive has also taken a heavy toll on Yemen’s infrastructure and led to a humanitarian crisis.

The number of suspected cholera cases in Yemen has exceeded 419,800 while almost 2,000 people have died since the outbreak of the epidemic in April, according to the latest figures provided by the World Health Organization (WHO).