SANA, Yemen — Renewed fighting in the Yemen conflict killed about 75 people on Saturday and Sunday, some of them in the first drone strikes launched during the new administration of President Trump, according to Yemeni news reports.
Two drone strikes in the central Yemeni province of Bayda on Saturday killed 10 militants with Al Qaeda, three of them hit while riding on a motorcycle and the other seven killed in a vehicle in a separate drone attack in the same area, the reports said.
The United States did not take responsibility for the strikes, as is its standard policy. No other forces are known to be conducting drone strikes in the area.
While Mr. Trump has pledged to toughen American policy toward terrorist factions, his administration has not yet announced any concrete antiterrorism initiatives.
The greatest loss of life in Yemen over the weekend was from an offensive begun two weeks ago on the Red Sea coast by the Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Yemen conflict began when Mr. Hadi was ousted by rebel Houthi forces, which now control the capital, Sana, and much of the Red Sea coastal areas of the country.
Credit
Hani Mohammed/Associated Press
The government offensive was aimed at retaking from the Houthis the port city of Mokha, close to Bab el Mandeb, a strategic strait that connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition killed at least 52 Houthi fighters in Mokha on Saturday and Sunday, according to Yemeni news reports, while the Houthis killed 14 of the Hadi government attackers, said hospital officials in Aden, the informal capital of the ousted government. Both sides issued widely varying accounts of the casualties. The true number of victims was impossible to verify, but it was clear that large numbers had been killed on both sides in the current offensive.
The government offensive reached within five or six miles of Mokha, a sleepy seaport once famous for its exports of the mocha variety of Arabica coffee beans, prized worldwide since the 19th century. The government has long accused the rebels of smuggling Iranian arms through ports on the Red Sea, including Mokha.
“The government forces have stormed an air defense camp southeast of Mokha town in Taiz Province,” said Abdo Abdullah Majili, a spokesman for coalition forces. “The town is within the range of our forces’ fire. We have killed a big number of Al Houthis and a lesser number of our soldiers were killed in the fighting.”
The Saudi-led coalition includes around nine regional countries, which intervened in Yemen after the Houthis ousted the Hadi government in March 2015. The coalition includes Egypt, which on Sunday extended its military’s participation in the coalition, according to state news media reports in Cairo.
“We are just renewing support, but we are not expanding efforts there,” Tamer el-Rafaei, a spokesman for the Egyptian military, said on Sunday. “We will announce how long this extension will be soon.”
Saudi and Yemeni government officials have long been frustrated by Egypt’s limited participation in the campaign.
