Plenty of things happening in Yemen the last two days - all at once.
As first, Israel flew in 19 Yemeni Jews, ending immigration mission. Between others, one of Rabbis flown out took with him a 500-years old Torah scroll.
According to Israelis, with this, they have evacuated all the Jews from Yemen, bringing related airlift operations 'to conclusion'. That said, about 50 Yemeni Jews decided to stay (40 of them are living in a compound near the US embassy in Sana'a).
'Best' of all is: Yemeni social media is full of reports about this operation being run in cooperation between Israelis and Houthis, i.e. there being a secret deal. With other words, Houthis are now defamed as 'traitors' and 'Israeli agents':
**************..."Not only did the agents of the Zionist occupation collaborate with Israel and the United States in the covert operation to airlift Yemenite Jews to Israel, they also allowed these Jews to steal our heritage," a Yemenite activist wrote on his Twitter page, referring to the ancient Torah scroll the Rabbi brought with him.
"After Houthis ignited war in different provinces in Yemen under the slogan "Death to Israel," the truth about them is revealed," read another popular remark regarding the ostensible "Israel-Houthi collaboration."
The official Twitter account of one of the well-known Yemenite daily newspapers, Yemen Now, went even further, claiming that "Houthis stipulated their collaboration with Israel on its support for them in international forums."
...
In Ta'iz area, the Houthis/YA have brought in the 11th Brigade, the last intact major unit of the YA left. This launched a counterattack on the YNA's positions at Jabal Han and Maqahwiyah, and overrun these, thus putting the city under siege again. Meanwhile, they should have captured the central prison too.
This is obviously a major setback for Hadi, who clearly failed to deploy reinforcements to Ta'iz: locals are complaining they feel 'abandoned by the government'. That said, plenty of such complaints are based on typical lack of patience: in essence, the locals expected everything would get better 'instantly' - which is impossible, of course. On the contrary, alone the situation with thousands of mines left behind by Houthis/YA is terrible: dozens of civilians were killed by these the last few days - foremost various merchants that rushed to Ta'iz in attempt to sell food to people there, but also at least two kids.
Of course, this is no good news for the Saudi-led coalition either: their heavy bombardment of the 11th Brigade as this advanced for Ta'iz appears to have been ineffective. Reasons are unknown, but possibly related to feint movement of several other YA units. Guess, without them deploying their ground troops to this area too, not much is going to change.
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I have to correct one of my earlier reports: namely, sometimes in late February I reported a Saudi attack on Mukhalla, a port in southern Yemen controlled by the AQAP. It turned out this was a 'mere' raid. That is: Saudi Marines landed east of this town, destroyed a major ammo depot there, and then withdrew. They also landed inside the port, destroyed several depots there (probably related to ammo), and then withdrew too.
Means: Mukhalla remains under AQAP control (i.e. their branch calling itself 'Sonst of Hadramawt').
Sorry for this: was my misunderstanding of related reports.
**Moderator has added correction pointer to Post 10**.
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Talking about AQAP: the US flew a major air strike on AQAP training camp outside Mukhalla, and there are claims about dozens of KIA:
The Pentagon claims up to '200 KIA in two air strikes'....Tribal sources in the area told AFP that a series of airstrikes hit the camp and that wounded militants were taken to a hospital in Mukalla.
Witnesses there reported seeing around nine vehicles carrying casualties from the area.
Dozens of Al-Qaeda militants were meanwhile seen rushing to the hospital to donate blood, according to residents.
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