Reuters, Cairo :
Saudi forces and Yemen’s Houthi militia traded heavy artillery fire which blew up part of the main border crossing between the two countries overnight, residents said on Sunday, an escalation of the two-month war.
The Haradh border crossing, the largest for passengers and goods between the world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, and its impoverished neighbor, was evacuated amid shelling which razed its departure lounge and passport section, witnesses said.
Residents of several Yemeni villages in the area left their homes and fled from the frontier, which has turned into a front line between the kingdom and the Iran-allied rebels. Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition bombing the Houthis and backing southern Yemeni fighters opposing the group and loyal to the exiled government in Saudi Arabia headed by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
The Sunni Muslim states believe the Shi’ite Houthis are a proxy for influence by their arch rival Iran, but their campaign has yet to reverse the rebels’ battlefield gains.
Residents in the central city of Taiz said Houthi forces and pro-Hadi fighters fired tank and artillery shells at each other throughout the city overnight, and the Houthis seized control of a military base on a strategic mountaintop.
Meanwhile, an Iranian Red Crescent plane carrying 20 tonnes of food for war-torn Yemen was prevented from landing in Djibouti, where the UN has a relief hub, official media said Saturday.
“Despite coordination with the United Nations and the World Food Programme, the plane was not granted permission to land in Djibouti,” the state run IRNA news agency said quoting a Red Crescent official.
The unnamed official said the plane was now in Shabahar, in southeastern Iran, awaiting “the authorisation of the foreign affairs ministry” of Djibouti.
An Iranian boat carrying 2,500 tonnes of aid for Yemen docked late Friday in the Horn of Africa port of Djibouti.
The cargo had been handed over to the WFP in Djibouti and was currently being offloaded, WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa said on Saturday. “The ship carries 2,500 ton of humanitarian aid and that includes mainly rice and wheat flour, as well as medicine, water, tents and blankets,” she said.
The Red Crescent official told IRNA the vessel was being offloaded in Djibouti.
The ship had initially been heading for the Yemeni port of Hodeida but had to change course after warnings from the United States and the Saudi-led coalition that has been pounding Shiite rebels in Yemen.
