DUBAI: The Arab coalition is prepared to use “calibrated force” to push the Iranian-backed Houthi militia to withdraw from Yemen’s Hodeidah port city under a UN-sponsored deal, the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs said on Wednesday.
The Arab coalition, which includes the UAE and Saudi Arabia, said on Wednesday it had targeted several Houthi military camps.
The Houthis have failed to pull troops from the country’s main port under a month-old truce, reviving the threat of an all-out assault on Hodeidah.
The Houthis control Hodeidah while Yemeni government factions backed by the coalition trying to restore the internationally recognized government are massed on its outskirts.
Gargash said the coalition struck 10 Houthi training camps outside Hodeidah governorate on Wednesday.
“The Coalition is prepared to use more calibrated force to prod Houthi compliance with Stockholm Agreement,” he tweeted.
“To preserve cease-fire & any hope for political process, UN and international community must press Houthis to stop violations, facilitate aid convoys, and move forward on withdrawal from Hodaida city & ports as agreed,” he added.
UN envoy Martin Griffiths has been shuttling between the parties to rescue the deal, the first major diplomatic breakthrough of the nearly four-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed Yemen to the verge of starvation.
Gargash tweeted: “Houthi militia hinder the mission of observers and are preventing relief ships from entering the port.”
The targeted camps were used by the militias as for training and arming fighters to send them to Hodaidah," coalition spokesman Col. Turki Al-Maliki said.
