Fears for Yemen civilians as battle to retake Hodeidah reaches residential areas around port

A Saudi-led coalition seized the airport of the Yemeni port city Hodeidah in a major setback for Iranian-linked Houthi rebels, who have threatened to lay waste to the city as they defend it.

The coalition forces comprising Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemeni allies hope to take the Houthi’s main port, but the fighting is likely to exacerbate a humanitarian crisis in the ravaged country where an estimated 8.4 million people are thought to be on the verge of starvation.

The assault on Hodeidah, which has spilled into residential areas raising concerns for civilians there, aims at ending a stalemate following the Saudi-led intervention in 2015 to roll back the Houthis who had swept across the country and seized the capital Sanaa. The fighting has already cut off water supplies, stoking fears of a cholera epidemic.

“The liberation of Hodeidah is the beginning to ending the war,” wrote UAE state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash on Twitter.

The coalition had launched its assault a week ago, promising a swift victory to spare the city’s remaining residents and to keep the port open. The United Nations has called on the Houthis to depart Hodeidah.

The rebels, whom the coalition accuses of having used the port to smuggle in Iranian made ballistic missiles launched against Saudi Arabia, have vowed to fight to death.

“Because Hodeidah is a matter of life or death, the free people have chosen to die with dignity defending it,” wrote Houthi official Hasan Zeid on Twitter.

“There is no going back on this decision: there won’t be a city fit for living left or for holding celebrations when either side wins.”

The rebels' leader Abdel Malik al-Houthi denied in a speech that Iranian missiles had come through the Red Sea port and threatened that the coalition's coastal campaign "will be a bog in which the forces of invasion and aggression will perish."

Meanwhile allegations that Yemenis have been raped in a UAE-run detention centre will place further scrutiny on the US and UK-backed coalition’s practices in Yemen.

The Associated Press interviewed witnesses who said guards and interrogators raped and electrocuted prisoners in a southern Yemen detention centre run by the UAE.

"They tortured me without even accusing me of anything," one of them said. “The worst thing about it is that I wish for death every day and I can’t find it."

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokeswoman said Britain was "concerned" by the report's allegations. "We are raising our concerns with relevant parties to the conflict and with civil society organisations."

Britain says it has provided targeting training to the coalition to ensure compliance with international law.