DOHA, October 17. /TASS/. Armed forces of the internationally recognized Yemeni government have neutralized over 800 members of the country’s rebel Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement over the past 24 hours, delivering over 1,400 strikes on their positions, Yemeni Armed Forces Spokesman Majid al-Nuzaili said.
"Over the past 24 hours, 1,417 precision and direct strikes were conducted using combat aircraft, drones, field artillery, and multiple launch rocket systems," he said in a statement.
In his words, "approximately 800 [enemy] elements were neutralized, including killed and wounded, and more than 190 pieces of armored vehicles were destroyed or disabled" as a result of the ongoing Operation Dawn of Yemen.
Al-Nuzaili said the strikes targeted Houthi manpower clusters, their fortified positions, firing points and drone launch sites.
The spokesman added that on the eastern front, government forces continued to clear enemy positions, establishing control over new tactical areas. Besides, in the Taiz Governorate in the country’s southwest, troops repelled continuous waves of Houthi attacks, while the Air Force delivered strikes on enemy positions and reinforcements, thus inflicting significant losses in terms of personnel and equipment.
The armed confrontation between the Houthis and government forces has been going on since August 2014. In September of that year, the Ansar Allah movement established control over the country’s capital Sana’a, and advanced southward. In March 2015, at the request of the then Yemen President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia entered the conflict on the side of the government; the coalition declared its goal to be the restoration of the authority of the country’s internationally recognized leadership.
In early August 2016, the Ansar Allah movement intensified its offensive in the southwest of the country, and in September it established control over the port city of Mocha and the territories with access to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in western Yemen. On October 5, Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, announced the launch of a large-scale military operation called the "Dawn of Yemen" to liberate the capital from the rebels; the operation is being carried out with the support of the coalition.
On October 12, the Houthis said they had gained control over a range of areas in the Taiz Governorate and had driven government forces out of these areas. On Wednesday, the armed forces of the internationally-recognized Yemeni government reported that they had neutralized around 1,250 militants and destroyed more than 460 their vehicles as part of Operation Dawn of Yemen.