(MENAFN- The Peninsula) At least 19 people were killed Wednesday in fighting in Yemen's flashpoint city of Aden, medics and security officials said, as Saudi-led operations focused on the country's south.
Rebel forces advanced onto a key district in the main southern city of Aden, where President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi had sought refuge before he fled Yemen, local government officials and witnesses said.
Their advance on Khor Maksar sparked deadly clashes with local militia and residents, witnesses said.
A medic at the city's main Jumhouriya Hospital said it has received the bodies of six dead civilians and five local militia fighters, known as "popular committees".
Meanwhile, a military official close to the Shiite Huthi rebels told AFP that they lost eight men in the clashes.
Coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed Assiri told reporters in Riyadh that the latest Saudi-led operations have target rebel brigades in Daleh, Aden and Shabwa, all provinces in Yemen's south.
"Operations in regions and roads leading to Aden were intensified and have been fruitful," he said at the daily briefing, without giving details.
The coalition had bombarded rebel positions in the port city Aden in a seventh night of raids that also targeted the capital and other areas.
The Aden strikes homed in on the rebel-held provincial administration complex in Dar Saad in the city's north, according to a military official.
He reported "many dead and wounded" among Huthi Shiites but was unable to give a precise toll.
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