Pro-government fighters pose for a photo in Yemen’s southern Lahj governorate, some 50km north of Aden, on Tuesday.

Rebels beat a retreat in the Wadi al-Husseini region around the road linking the Al-Anad air base and provincial capital Huta, a source says

Agencies
Aden


Pro-government forces pursued fleeing Shia Houthi fighters in south Yemen yesterday, military sources said, as they looked to press recent gains against the rebels, including retaking a key air base.
Soldiers loyal to exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi wrested control on Tuesday of Al-Anad air base in Lahj province—one of Yemen’s largest military facilities—from the Houthis, and later advanced to take provincial capital Huta.
Al-Anad’s recapture is a major boost for the defence of second city Aden, and paves the way for a possible return by the exiled government to the southern port, which was its last refuge before fleeing into exile in Saudi Arabia in March.
The country’s prime minister and several senior officials returned last week to begin overseeing reconstruction of the devastated city.
Military and medical sources said at least 39 rebels and 17 loyalists had been killed since Tuesday around Huta, which had been in Houthi hands since March.  
“(The situation in) Huta is under control after search operations last night and this morning,” a military source said.
Rebels beat a retreat in the Wadi al-Husseini region around the road linking Al-Anad and Huta, the source said, adding that Lahj’s provincial governor was expected to visit Huta later yesterday.  
Later, however, aides said without elaborating that the governor’s return had been postponed indefinitely.
Al-Anad, 60km north of Aden, is strategically located on the main road north towards both the battleground third city of Taez and rebel-held capital Sanaa.
The vast complex housed US troops overseeing a drone war against Al Qaeda in Yemen until shortly before the rebels overran it.
Its loss is a major blow to the insurgents, whose leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi claimed just on Sunday that their ouster from Aden after four months of ferocious fighting was merely a “short-term” setback that would be reversed.
Yemen has been riven by violence since the Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes against the rebels earlier this year after they and troops loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh approached Aden after seizing Sanaa in September.
To secure Yemen’s second city, pro-government forces are seeking to retake areas in Lahj and neighbouring Abyan province in a bid to prevent a rebel riposte.
Recent days have seen fierce fighting in Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan that remains under rebel control, and in the southern town of Loder, according to residents and local officials.
A spokesman for the pro-Hadi forces said yesterday “the liberation of Zinjibar is now close”.
The United Nations has called repeatedly for a ceasefire in Yemen, but talks in Geneva in June collapsed without the warring parties ever sitting down in the same room.
The exiled government said it would only discuss the rebels’ withdrawal from all of the territory they have seized, in line with a UN Security Council resolution adopted in April.
Riad Kahwaji, head of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said recent gains by loyalist forces, backed by Saudi-led air strikes, had exposed Houthi weakness.
And the Houthis are now under even more pressure from the coalition after hundreds of Gulf Arab troops, mostly from the United Arab Emirates, disembarked in Aden at the weekend along with tanks and artillery.
“The continuation of the offensive exerts heavy pressure on the Houthis, yet they continue to refuse initiatives for a peaceful solution to the crisis,” he said.
However, the rebel leader has said he is open to a political solution to the conflict.
The United Nations says the war has killed nearly 4,000 people, half of them civilians, while 80% of the 21mn population needs aid and protection.
Nearly 100,000 Yemenis have fled abroad since late March, the UN refugee agency says.
Relief agency Doctors Without Borders warned this week that Yemen’s health services were “nearing collapse”.
The retaking of Aden by pro-government forces has allowed aid to begin to flow into southern Yemen.  
A Saudi military plane touched down yesterday at the port city’s repaired international airport, carrying 25 tonnes of medical supplies.
And the European Union announced 12mn euros ($13.1mn) in new humanitarian aid for Yemen.
Residents in Sanaa are stocking up on rare food and fuel supplies after the government in exile decided to divert aid ships from the rebel-held north to loyalist areas farther south.
Sources in Yemen’s government confirmed the move, though there has been no official announcement, and the information minister said on Tuesday that commercial flights would be diverted from the capital to the southern port of Aden.
Residents in the capital scrambled to stock up on food from stores as the black market price for 20 litres of petrol jumped to $60 in recent days compared to an official price of $15.