Saudi-backed Yemeni fighters completed their offensive to retake the southern city of Aden from the Houthi militia on Friday, residents said, as fighting in one main district subsided.
Their victory in the port city – backed up by training and heavy weapons delivered by an Arab military coalition – marks a turning point in almost four months of aerial bombing and civil war in which battle lines seldom changed but more than 3,500 people have been killed and a million displaced.
The war in Yemen has pitted the Sunni Muslim Gulf states which support the exiled government against the Shi’ite Houthis allied to Iran, in a conflict that has further raised the stakes as the Middles East grapples with regional rivalries and sectarian strife.
Aden has been a focus of fighting since the Iranian-allied Houthis first laid siege to it in March when it was the last bastion to the government which then fled to Saudi Arabia.
Several residents displaced from their homes in Tawahi, a district in the west of the city which had been the last redoubt of the Houthis in Aden, told Reuters they had returned to their homes and that despite occasional gunfire the streets were controlled by anti-Houthi gunmen.
Khaled Bahah, vice president of Yemen’s exiled government in Riyadh, hailed the “liberation” of the city on his Facebook page, and several ministers and top intelligence officials touched down in the city on Friday to prepare it as a base to revive the shattered Yemeni state.
Once one of the world’s busiest ports, Aden sits near the Bab al-Mandab shipping lane, a major energy gateway for Europe, Asia and the United States via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
