Houthis kill top Yemeni general

A top general loyal to Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi’s government has been killed in fighting with Iran-aligned Houthi troops east of the capital Sana’a, sources on both sides of the conflict have confirmed.

Major-General Abd Al-Rab Al-Shadadi, commander of Yemen’s Third Military Region – which has its headquarters in the city of Marib east of Sana’a – was the most senior member of the pro-Hadi forces to be killed in nearly 19 months of civil war in Yemen.

The Houthi-run Saba News agency quoted a pro-Houthi military source as saying late on Friday that artillery gunners targeted Al-Shadadi after they pinpointed his location.

On Saturday, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya quoted a statement from the Hadi government as saying Al-Shadadi died in hospital after being badly wounded in Marib.

A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting to restore Hadi to power since March 2015 in a military intervention dubbed “Operation Decisive Storm” after the Iran-aligned Houthis seized Sana’a and forced the government into exile.
UN-sponsored talks to stop the fighting, which has killed more than 10,000 people, ended inconclusively in August.

Al-Shadadi’s death could be in retaliation for the killings of generals and senior officers loyal to the Houthis and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Last month, a source in the Saudi-led coalition said the head of Houthi special forces, Major-General Hassan Almalsi, was killed while leading a squad of Houthi fighters trying to infiltrate Yemen’s southern province of Najran.

Tehran views the Houthis as the legitimate authority in Yemen and has been supplying them with arms. The Houthis say they are fighting a revolution against a corrupt government and its Gulf backers.

Saudi Arabia sees regional rival Iran as the paramount threat to stability in the Middle East because of its support for Shia militias that Riyadh says have inflamed sectarian violence. These include groups controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), including Hezbollah and dozens of Iraqi militias who are also fighting in Syria.