AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s government troops fended off on Tuesday a major attack by Iran-backed Houthis on the town of Bayhan in the southern province of Shabwa, the latest in a string of Houthi military escalations around the nation.

The government’s Giants Brigades said on Wednesday that the Houthis launched an attack from three fronts from neighboring Al-Bayda province on their positions outside the town of Bayhan, resulting in heavy fighting that killed or wounded dozens of Houthis, forcing them to retreat and stop the attack after failing to advance into the town.

The Giants Brigades, backed by the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen, regained Bayhan, Ouselan, and Ain from the Houthis in Shabwa province in January 2022, after more than 10 days of heavy battle.

Despite the relative quiet on the country’s main fronts since April 2022, when the UN-brokered ceasefire came into force, the Houthis have launched offensive attacks on government troops in Marib, Taiz, Dhale, and other disputed districts.

The Houthi attack in Shabwa came a day after the Yemeni government accused the Yemeni militia of preventing two aircraft from landing at government-controlled ports in Marib and Taiz.

Muammar Al-Eryani, Yemen’s information minister, said the Houthis, through Sanaa Aviation Authority, threatened to shoot down a UN aircraft if it landed at a small airport in Marib, which caused the flight at Aden airport to be canceled.

He said the Houthis, also via the Sanaa Aviation Authority, stopped this week a Sudanese plane heading for the Red Sea Mocha airfield in Taiz from entering the country’s airspace.

The plane carrying more than 100 stranded Yemenis at Sudanese Port of Sudan town was forced into returning to Sudan after the Houthi threat.

“It continues to act as a dirty tool for Iran to destabilize security and stability in Yemen and the region, and to threaten international interests,” Al-Eryani said, describing the barring of the two planes as a “dangerous escalation.”

Yemeni Foreign Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak said that he met the UN Yemen envoy, Hans Grundberg, in Riyadh to discuss the impact of the Houthis’ obstruction of the two flights on Yemen’s worsening humanitarian crisis, peace efforts and the Houthi Red Sea attacks.

At another meeting in Riyadh on Wednesday, Bin Mubarak informed the US ambassador to Yemen, Steven Fagin, that the Houthis’ attacks on ships in the Red Sea had resulted in a decrease in commercial shipments arriving at the Red Sea ports, increased shipping and insurance costs, and threatened to disrupt the flow of food supplies to Yemen.

The war in Yemen, which started in late 2014 when the Houthis took control by force, has killed thousands of people, displaced thousands more, and resulted in what the UN has previously described as the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster.