Region

TRIPOLI — The Daesh group on Sunday declared “war” on the powerful Fajr Libya (Libya dawn) militia alliance that controls Tripoli and claimed a suicide bombing that killed five of its fighters.

The dawn blast in northwest Libya is the latest in a series of attacks by Daesh in the politically divided North African country, where the jihadists have exploited chaos to gain a growing foothold.

“A car suicide bomber blew himself up near a checkpoint at an entrance of Dafniya,” between the town of Zliten and Libya’s third city Misrata, said a spokesman for Fajr Libya.

The attack killed five fighters and wounded seven others, he added.

The LANA news agency of the militia-backed Tripoli administration gave a similar account of the attack and also reported that five were dead.

Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack in a message posted on Twitter, identifying the suicide bomber as a Tunisian named Abu Wahib Al Tunsi.

The jihadist group also warned Fajr Libya to be ready for “war”.

“The apostates of Fajr Libya... must know that a war is coming to cleanse the land of their filth unless they repent and go back to their true religion,” said the extremist group.

Libya plunged into chaos after the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed long-time dictator Muammar Qadhafi, with battle-hardened former rebels armed with heavy weapons carving out their own fiefdoms.

Fajr Libya, an alliance of armed groups including Islamists opposed to the extremist religious views of Daesh, seized power in Tripoli last year.

It installed a new government and parliament in the capital, prompting the administration recognised by the international community to flee to the east of the country.

Oilfields at risk

Sunday’s attack comes a day after Libya’s recognised government called on the international community to provide it with weapons to battle Daesh.

A statement warned that Daesh plans on seizing “oilfields to fund its operations”, as it has done in Syria and Iraq where the jihadists last year set up a “caliphate” straddling both countries.

The government’s plea comes after Daesh on Thursday seized control of the airport in Sirte, Qadhafi’s hometown east of Tripoli, after Fajr Libya fighters withdrew from the facility.

It was the first time that Daesh in Libya has recorded such a military gain.

The Gardabiya Airport, which is also a military base, lies just 150 kilometres from Libya’s so-called “oil crescent” — home to key oilfields and export terminals.

Officials in Tripoli said that Daesh had allied with supporters of the ousted Qadhafi regime to deploy across Sirte.

Sirte has been rocked by sporadic fighting between Daesh and Fajr Libya since February, when jihadists deployed in the city, capturing government buildings and the university.

The city, located 450 kilometres east of Tripoli, was already a bastion of Islamist extremist groups, including Ansar Al Sharia.

The radical group is classified by the United States as a “terrorist” organisation and suspected of involvement in the 2012 attack on the US consulate in the second city of Benghazi.

Tripoli officials say that Daesh, which also has positions in the eastern city of Derna, has “sleeping cells” in the capital, where the group has already claimed several attacks.

In a bid to find a solution to the crisis, the United Nations has for months struggled to broker a deal between warring parties through the creation of a national unity government.

On Saturday night a UN-sponsored meeting in neighbouring Tunisia of Libyan mayors and municipal representatives ended with a declaration calling for the “swift formation of a government of national accord”.

Special envoy Bernardino Leon said on Thursday that the UN was preparing a new draft peace agreement which it plans to hand over to the rival factions in the first week of June.

WASHINGTON — An Egyptian-American who had been sentenced to life in prison in Egypt and had been on a hunger strike for more than a year before being freed has arrived back in the United States.

Mohammed Soltan, the son of a prominent member of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, arrived at Dulles International Airport on Saturday night in a wheelchair, The Washington Post said. The newspaper said Soltan was greeted with tears, hugs and calls of "welcome home”.

Soltan had been convicted of financing an anti-government sit-in and spreading "false news”. He was among the thousands imprisoned after the 2013 military overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

The 27-year-old Ohio State University graduate and former Barack Obama campaigner had been on a hunger strike over his detention of more than a year, and his family said his health was deteriorating.

Soltan's release comes amid international criticism over Egypt's mass trials and imprisonments, and only days before President Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi travels to Germany on a state visit.

He was arrested in August 2013 when security forces came looking for his father at his home. His family said they didn't find the father at the time, but arrested him instead. His father, Salah, was detained later.

Waleed Nasser, a lawyer representing Soltan, said he was forced to renounce his Egyptian citizenship in order to secure his release. A decree Sisi issued in November allows him to deport foreign defendants convicted or accused of crimes.

In a statement, Soltan's family thanked those who helped work for his release, saying that the US government had made extensive efforts to secure his return home.

"Mohammed's health is dire," his family said. "He will receive medical treatment as soon as he arrives on US soil and will spend the immediate future with his family recovering."

A State Department statement released Saturday welcomed Soltan's release.

A criminal court in April sentenced Soltan to life in prison, while upholding death sentences for 14 people, including his father and Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie, and sentencing 36 others to life in prison, including three Egyptian journalists.

The case is rooted in the violence that swept Egypt after the military-led ouster in July 2013 of Morsi, a veteran Brotherhood leader and the country's first freely elected president. His supporters set up protest camps in Cairo, but security forces violently dispersed the sit-ins in August 2013, killing hundreds. In retaliation, many police stations and churches came under attack.

Soltan had been working as an assistant and translator for US and international news organisations during the protests, but prosecutors accused him of participating in a plan to overthrow the country's military rulers.

DUBAI — Aircraft from a Saudi-led coalition bombed Yemen's Houthi outposts throughout the country on Sunday, residents said, while Yemen's government in exile said the militia was in talks with the United States in Oman.

The raids hit an air base near Sanaa Airport and a military installation aligned with the Houthis overlooking the presidential palace compound in the capital Sanaa.

The Saudi-led coalition began air strikes in Yemen in March in a campaign to restore Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power. He fled in March, after Iranian-backed Houthis seized Sanaa in September and then thrust into central and south Yemen.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed and over 8,000 wounded in the conflict since March 19, according to the United Nations.

The Houthis' TV channel Al Masira said the coalition had launched 25 air strikes on the main Houthi provinces of Saada and Hajja along the kingdom's border, without giving details, and said Saudi ground forces were also shelling the areas.

Residents in Saada confirmed to Reuters by telephone that Houthi positions were heavily bombed by war planes, but there was no immediate confirmation by Saudi authorities.

In the central city of Taiz, also a main battleground between armed Hadi loyalists and Houthi militiamen, residents reported Arab air strikes on Houthi forces gathered in a historic mountaintop fortress and a nearby special forces base.

Oman talks

Yemen's exiled government in Saudi Arabia told Reuters on Sunday that senior Houthi officials are holding talks with the United States in neighbouring Oman to help end the nine-week conflict, in a sign that diplomacy may be advancing.

"We have been informed that there are meetings, at American request, and that a private American plane carried the Houthis to Muscat," Rajeh Badi, a spokesman for the Hadi government told Reuters by telephone from the Saudi capital Riyadh.

The Yemeni government was not party to the talks, Badi said. There was no immediate comment from Houthi or US officials.

If confirmed, the Oman meeting would be the first between the Houthis and the United States, Saudi Arabia's main foreign ally, since the start of the war.

The United States has said it was providing arms and intelligence to Saudi Arabia during its campaign in Yemen and has historically been its most powerful ally.

"We hope that these talks are being held in the context of international efforts to implement UN Security Council resolution 2216," Badi said.

The resolution, adopted in April, recognised Hadi as Yemen's legitimate authority and called on the Houthis to quit the main cities.

UN special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, has renewed efforts to set another date for Yemeni political factions to meet in Geneva for peace talks, which were postponed indefinitely after Hadi demanded delays.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam announced on May 23 that he had departed with an official delegation from the group to neighbouring Oman to discuss the conflict with the Omani government, a frequent peacebroker in the region.

Yemeni politicians who met Ould Cheikh Ahmed in Sanaa on Saturday said he had informed them that "indirect talks" were underway in Muscat between the Houthi delegation and US officials through Omani mediation.

Officials from the UN envoy's team were not immediately available to comment.

Cluster bombs

Heavy artillery clashes along Yemen's border with the kingdom have increased as the war enters its ninth week.

Houthi TV reported that the rebels fired 20 rockets at Saudi Arabia's southwestern border city of Najran on Saturday, and broadcast a video it said showed Houthi forces shelling a Saudi border post.

A Saudi interior ministry spokesman said a border guard was killed and seven others were wounded on Saturday in the Najran region by rocket attacks from inside Yemen.

The coalition's campaign aimed to neutralise "the threats posed by heavy weapons in the hands of elements not backing the legitimate authority in Yemen”, Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri of Egypt, a member of the Saudi-led coalition, told reporters alongside his Saudi counterpart in the capital Cairo on Sunday.

DOHA — A death sentence handed to a Filipino in Qatar for spying was reduced on appeal by a Doha court on Sunday to life imprisonment.

Two other sentences of life imprisonment against another pair of defendants, also from the Philippines, were reduced at the same time by Qatar's court of appeal to 15 years in jail.

One of the men sentenced to serve 15 years has been named as Ronaldo Lopez Ulep.

All three had been convicted last year on charges of espionage and passing on Qatar military and economic secrets to the Philippines government.

The unnamed defendant who was originally sentenced to death is likely to spend up to 25 years in prison.

He worked as a supervisor at Qatar Petroleum.

The other two defendants worked for the Qatar Air Force.

At the time of their conviction it was alleged that the two men working for the air force supplied information to the third man for cash.

Following Sunday's brief hearing, the Philippines ambassador to Qatar, Wilfred C. Santos, said the reduction in sentences was "welcome" but a further appeal may take place.

"We welcome this development and we will continue to monitor the case," he said.

"We are willing to exhaust all legal avenues."

Manila has "emphatically" denied spying on Qatar.

All three men have been detained since 2010.

The case has raised concerns among rights groups, which question the convictions and allege the three men have been tortured while being detained.

Amnesty International alleges Lopez Ulep spent four years in solitary confinement and was convicted "on the basis of a 'confession' he was forced to sign, even though it was written in Arabic and he could not read it".

Ahead of Sunday's hearing, Amnesty released a blog from the 17-year-old daughter of Lopez Ulep, who said her father was dragged away from their Doha home in April 2010 and the family have not seen him since.

She said investigators took laptops, photos and the family's savings hidden in a safe. 

The teenager, who is now in the Philippines, urged the Qatari authorities to release her father and "return what they took from us for the past five years".

Santos said Manila knew about the allegations of torture.

"We are aware of these and are taking note of this," he said.

Relatives of the defendants were also at court but refused to comment afterwards.

AMMAN/BEIRUT — Daesh fighters advanced against rival insurgents in northern Syria on Sunday, capturing areas close to a border crossing with Turkey and threatening their supply route to Aleppo city, fighters and a group monitoring the war said.

Daesh captured the town of Soran Azaz and two nearby villages after clashes with fighters from a northern rebel alliance, which was formed last December and includes both Western-backed fighters and Islamist militants.

This meant Daesh will be able to move along a road leading north to the Bab Al Salam border crossing between the Syrian province of Aleppo and the Turkish province of Kilis, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The town's loss is a blow to rebels grouped in the so-called Jabhat Al Shamiyya alliance (Levant Front), because the area sits on an important supply route to bring weapons into eastern Aleppo, two fighters said.

"The main supply line between Turkey and Aleppo will be severely affected," said Abu Bakr, an alliance field commander, said in a online message.

The Levant Front was created in Aleppo in an effort to forge unity among factions in Syria that have often fought each other as well as the Syrian army and hardline jihadist groups, undermining the revolt against President Bashar Assad.

Rebels said the Daesh gains had upset plans for a wider offensive that was being prepared ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to seize government-controlled parts of Aleppo.

Residents in eastern Aleppo said convoys of rebel fighters were now heading back to areas in the Soran countryside to try to repel Daesh. The west of the city is held by government forces.

Daesh's next stop could be Syria's Azaz city, 10km further north east and a gateway to the border crossing close by, the observatory added.

"A small advance by Daesh would get them to Azaz," said another rebel from the Nour Al Din Al Zenki brigade, which is in the Levant Front. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Daesh.

Gas explosion

The city of Azaz, flooded with thousands of refugees fleeing violence across northern Syria, has also been a major arms route and commercial thoroughfare for hundreds of trucks carrying Turkish goods to rebel-held areas in Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

US-led forces bombing Daesh in Syria and Iraq carried out their latest raids on Sunday near the city of Kobani close to the Turkish border and Syria's northwestern Hasaka province, but did not hit Aleppo and surrounding areas.

Daesh holds swathes of territory across Syria and Iraq, and has advanced rapidly in other parts of Syria in recent weeks, capturing the central city of Palmyra and the last border crossing between Syria and Iraq in the east.

The group is fighting both rival insurgents, the Syrian military and Kurdish forces in the four-year-old conflict. Their advances bring them closer to Kurdish-controlled Afrin town.

In the northwestern Hasaka province, a fire in a clinic caused by a gas explosion killed at least 24 people including children in Qamishli city, the observatory said.

Syrian air force strikes on Saturday in Al Shadadi town in the province had killed 43 Daesh fighters and 22 civilians, it added.

Kurdish YPG forces have been battling Daesh in Hasaka, a strategic province for all sides in the conflict due to its position next to Daesh-held territory in Iraq.

Daesh appeared to be losing land around Tal Abyad town, which lies north of its stronghold Raqqa city. Tal Abyad is one of the few remaining towns along the border with Turkey in Daesh control, Kurdish and Arab tribal sources said.

Tal Abyad is Daesh's main access point to Turkey from Raqqa. Its capture would allow Kurdish forces to link up territory in Aleppo with their strongholds in the Hasaka and Qamishli provinces, defence experts say.

SANAA — The UN envoy for Yemen on Saturday launched a mission to discuss stalled Geneva peace talks as Saudi-led coalition warplanes pounded rebel positions across the war-ravaged country.

In the southern province of Abyan, a car bomb blast killed 12 rebels and wounded eight others, a local official said.

Coalition warplanes launched deadly air strikes against rebel positions in the southern city of Aden, a military official said, without giving figures.

But 48 hours of fighting there and rebel shelling with mortar rounds and Katyusha rockets killed nine people and wounded 132 others, a health official and a spokesman of anti-rebel forces in the port city said.

UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who flew in to Sanaa on Friday, said "all Yemeni parties must return to dialogue", quoted by the rebel-held sabanews.net.

A member of ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh's General People's Congress told AFP the Mauritanian diplomat met Saturday with "senior leaders" of the party for talks on the Geneva conference.

But the source said the envoy did not meet with Saleh himself, who lashed out at Saudi Arabia in an interview with a Beirut-based television channel broadcast on Friday.

Saudi Arabia has been leading an air war since March 26 targeting Iran-backed Houthi Shiite rebels in Yemen and allied forces loyal to Saleh.

Clashes have also raged on the ground between the rebels and local militia fighting their advance, especially in southern Yemen. 

The Geneva conference had been due to take place on May 28 but has been postponed, in a fresh blow to UN efforts to end a conflict estimated to have killed almost 2,000 people.

Speaking from Sanaa, Saleh said in the interview that he had rejected a Saudi offer of "millions of dollars" to drop his alliance with the Houthis.

Coalition warplanes struck a house of the ousted president in his home town of Sanhan, south of the capital, shortly after the interview was broadcast.

The former strongman no longer resides in his Sanhan home which has also been targeted in previous raids, and he is believed to be staying at a hotel in Sanaa.

Other raids on Friday night hit the rebel-held air force headquarters in Sanaa, arms depots in Sanhan, and Dailami air base, also in the capital, witnesses said.

Saleh was forced to resign in early 2012 after waging a bloody crackdown on a year of protests calling for an end to his three decades of iron-fisted rule.

His forces have been backing the Houthi rebels who seized Sanaa in September before fanning out across the country.

Talks with S. Arabia

In his interview, Saleh renewed calls for talks in Geneva between Yemeni parties as well as Yemen and Saudi Arabia — which he accused of seeking to sow “sedition” in the war-torn country.

But “sooner or later we will hold talks with Saudi Arabia”, said the former president who belongs to the Houthis’ Zaidi off-shoot of Shiite Islam.

Saleh said talks in Geneva, which he himself had first proposed, should focus on a “power transfer, choosing a new authority” and elections, as well as “condemning the Saudi aggression”.

Yemen’s government says it will only take part once rebels withdrew from at least part of the territory they have seized, in line with a UN Security Council resolution.

Riyadh, which has given refuge to Yemen’s President Abed Rabbo Mansour Al Hadi, hosted talks on May 17 that were boycotted by the Houthis but attended by figures from Saleh’s party.

Other talks are reportedly being held in Oman where a Houthi delegation travelled on Thursday, two days after a visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif.

Saleh said in his interview that the United States has also been holding talks in Oman.

Yemen’s neighbour has good ties with both Tehran and Riyadh, and Muscat has often played the role of mediator.

It is the only member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council not to have joined the Saudi-led air war.

Sabanews.net quoted a Houthi spokesman as saying that an “exchange of views and proposals with international and regional parties” were being aired in the sultanate.

ALEPPO, Syria — Barrel bombs dropped from regime helicopters Saturday killed more than 70 civilians in Syria's Aleppo. 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "at least 71 civilians were killed, and dozens wounded when regime helicopters dropped barrel bombs" on the provincial town of Al Bab and Al Shaar district of the city of Aleppo.

In the worst carnage, 59 civilians, all male, were killed at a market in jihadist-controlled Al Bab, observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"People often gather on Saturday mornings at Al Hail market in Al Bab, which is why the number of dead was so high," explained Abdel Rahman.

“Those killed were all male because women have much less freedom of movement in areas controlled by the Islamic State [Daesh] jihadist group,” he added.

The head of the Britain-based monitoring group said 12 people were also killed in rebel-held Al Shaar, including eight members of a single family.

Victims' bodies were laid out on the streets of the neighbourhood, with the limp blood-covered hand of one of them protruding from under a blanket, said an AFP correspondent at the scene.

Shahud Hussein, one of the civil defence volunteers helping to clear rubble in Al Shaar, said the blasts were so powerful that buildings were "likely to collapse".

Rapid retreat

Barrel bombs — crude weapons made of containers packed with explosives — have often struck schools, hospitals, and markets in Syria. 

But Saturday’s death toll was among the highest. 

“This is one of the biggest massacres that regime planes have committed since the beginning of 2015,” said the Syrian Revolution General Commission activist group. 

The observatory said regime forces also dropped barrel bombs Friday in Idlib province, now under the de facto control of rebels after regime forces withdrew, leaving Al Qaeda and its allies to capture the city of Ariha and surrounding villages.

The tactic of carrying out air attacks on built-up areas after battleground losses has become common practise for Syria’s regime, which has ceded swathes of territory this month.

Following defeats in Idlib’s provincial capital and at a massive military base nearby, government forces also lost the ancient city of Palmyra to Daesh jihadists on May 21. 

In northeast Syria on Saturday, Daesh launched an assault on Hasakeh city, which has a large Kurdish population. 

The observatory said at least 10 pro-government forces and 10 jihadists were killed. 

The Assyrian Network for Human Rights activist group said Daesh had seized one checkpoint on Hasakeh’s edges.

In a provincial town to the north, Kurdish militia executed at least 20 civilians Friday, including two children, after accusing them of being IS supporters, the observatory reported.

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia's branch of militant group Daesh has said it wants to clear the Arabian Peninsula of Shiite Muslims and urged young men in the kingdom to join its cause, the US-based SITE monitoring centre has reported.

Daesh claimed two suicide bombings carried out on May 22 and May 29 on Shiite mosques in eastern Saudi Arabia, where the bulk of the Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority lives. The attacks killed 25 people.

In the 13-minute-long recording, the speaker said Daesh had ordered its followers everywhere to "kill enemies of Islam, especially Shiites", according to SITE.

"What then if they live with their disbelief in the Peninsula of Mohammad," SITE quoted the speaker as saying, referring to the Arabian Peninsula, birthplace of Islam and where Saudi Arabia is located.

"They are disbelievers and apostates, and their blood is permissible to be shed, and their money is permissible to be taken. It is a duty upon us to kill them... and even to purify the land from their filth," he said.

While the speaker made a reference to the suicide bombing on May 22 in Al Qadeeh village, he did not mention the May 29 attack in Dammam, suggesting the recording predates the latest bombing.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, has strongly denounced the attacks on its Shiite population and Saudi King Salman has vowed to bring those involved or sympathetic to the acts to justice.

Western-allied Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab campaign against Yemen's Houthis, who follow a sect of Shiite Islam and are allied to Tehran. Analysts say the conflict is a tussle for influence between Sunni Muslim kingdom and Shiite power Iran.

In the recording, the speaker urged young Saudis to join his group to fend off what he called the “Shiite threat” against Sunni Muslims and said the government of King Salman was unable to protect them.

“The spark has been lit, so you must all ignite a fire with which you burn the faces of the Rafidha [Shiites] and apostates. You must all come to burn the thrones of the tyrants,” he said.

Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, in a speech a week before Al Qadeh attack, dismissed Saudi Arabia’s ruling family, Al Saud, as “guard dogs” of the West and Israel. Muslim enemies, including Shiites, were “allies of Satan”, he said.

His group controls large parts of Iraq and Syria.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces retook an area west of Ramadi on Saturday as they pressed their operation aimed at sealing off the jihadists who captured the city two weeks ago, commanders said.

"The Iraqi army and the Hashed Al Shaabi liberated the Anbar traffic police building in the 5km area west of Ramadi after a fierce fight," an army officer said.

Hashed Al Shaabi ("popular mobilisation" in Arabic) is an umbrella for mostly Shiite militia and volunteers that has played a key role in Iraq's fight against the Daesh group.

"The battle forced IS [Daesh] to withdraw from the building, which they had used as a base, and pull back into Ramadi city," the officer told AFP.

Iraqi forces have launched wide operations aimed at severing the supply lines of the jihadists who control most of Anbar, a vast Sunni province in western Iraq of which Ramadi is the capital.

"The security forces today are tightening their stranglehold on Ramadi, from the traffic police building to the west, from the university to the south and from the other sides too," Anbar police chief Hadi Rzayej said.

He said ordnance disposal teams were busy removing roadside bombs and checking buildings for booby traps in reconquered positions on the outskirts of Ramadi.

Iraqi government and allied forces retook the southern districts of Taesh, Humeyrah and the Anbar university compound earlier this week.

The jihadists seized Ramadi on May 17, using an unprecedented wave of suicide vehicle-borne bomb attacks to force a retreat from the forces that had managed to hold some positions in the city for more than a year.

An army colonel said Daesh unleashed eight suicide car bombs on a military base in eastern Anbar Saturday. Forces equipped with anti-tank systems were able to stop all of them, he said.

“Army forces managed to repel a Daesh attack involving eight vehicle bombs driven by eight suicide bombers,” said the colonel at the base in Al Shiha, about 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.

He said they used Kornet anti-tank guided missiles “recently delivered to the security forces”.

The United States also announced after the fall of Ramadi that it was sending 2,000 Swedish-developed AT4 unguided anti-tank weapons to help the Iraqi forces counter the threat of car and truck bombs.

As they attempt to isolate Anbar from other provinces, Iraqi forces have also been fighting in Salaheddin province, whose capital Tikrit was recaptured two months ago but where Daesh still holds territory.

Federal and Hashed Al Shaabi forces have been making progress in the Baiji area, around 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, which commands access to a key road leading to western Anbar.

SANAA — Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies took control of a strategic city in the southern Yemeni province of Shabwa Saturday, security officials and witnesses said, as Saudi-led coalition warplanes continue air strikes across the country in an effort to push back the rebels' advance.

Security officials said the city of Saeed fell into the hands of the Houthis after some local tribal sheikhs and military leaders accepted money and weapons to facilitate their entry into the area. They say dozens of fighters were killed in the two-day long battle, along with six civilians.

The city of Saeed lies along key strategic routes to the eastern Yemeni province of Hadramawt and to the port city of Balhaf, home to a major liquefied natural gas terminal.

A Saudi-led coalition has been targeting the Houthis since March 26. Saudi Arabia and the West accuse Iran of supporting the Houthis militarily, something Tehran and the rebels both deny. Meanwhile, the ongoing fighting on the ground in Yemen pits the Houthis and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh against supporters of embattled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Yemeni security and medical officials said at least eight civilians were killed Saturday as a result of violent clashes in Aden, Taiz and Marib.

In Marib, the centre of much of Yemen's oil industry, the spokesman for the area's tribes, Saleh Al Anjaf, said tribal fighters were able to drive back the Houthis and their allies from positions east of Marib city. They were supported by coalition planes, he said.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to journalists.

Meanwhile, United Nations Special Envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed held consultations with Yemeni political groups in the capital, Sanaa, after peace talks were indefinitely postponed earlier this week.

International aid groups say Yemen's conflict has killed up to 2,000 people and wounded 8,000, while recent UN estimates have said that at least 1,037 civilians, including 130 women and 234 children, have been killed in the fighting.