10 Dead as Intense Coalition Raids Hit Yemen Capital

Saudi-led air attacks on rebel positions in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Tuesday killed at least 10 people, an Agence France Presse correspondent and medics said, as powerful explosions rocked the city.

Witnesses said coalition targets included the police academy and the headquarters of the security services, both in the heart of the city which Shiite Huthi rebels have controlled since September last year.

Overnight strikes also targeted the Sanaa residences of Huthi leaders, witnesses said.

Witnesses reported plumes of smoke rising from the security headquarters while residents near the police academy said many people were wounded by flying glass when the blasts shattered windows.

Women and children terrified by the intensity of the explosions fled into the streets, witnesses said.

The rebel-controlled sabanews.net website reported 15 dead and 77 wounded in Tuesday's raids.

Medical sources said that at least seven "civilians" and three guards of leading Huthi officer Khaled al-Anduli were killed in the overnight strikes.

One of Anduli's neighbours, 43-year-old Hamid Hassan, told AFP that "one of my sons (an 18-year-old) was wounded when his bedroom windows shattered after the raid on the officer's house".

Ambulances rushed to Anduli's home where medics retrieved the bodies of victims, Hassan said, adding that the Huthi leader himself had been elsewhere at the time of the raid.

The latest strikes come a day after the government announced that 10,000 Yemeni fighters are now ready as part of the "national army being prepared to liberate Sanaa and other provinces".

Gulf Arab members of the Saudi-led anti-rebel coalition have also reportedly sent thousands of heavily armed reinforcements to Yemen after a Huthi missile attack killed 60 coalition soldiers on Friday.

The additional troops, mostly from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, were deployed to the battleground eastern oil province of Marib where the attack took place, the reports said.

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reaffirmed in a statement on the official SPA news agency that "the coalition will decisively continue its operations to defeat the rebels and those supporting them... who are attempting to undermine regional security".

In March, the coalition launched its air war against the Iran-backed rebels when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled to neighbouring Saudi Arabia after they entered his last refuge, Yemen's second city Aden. 

After loyalists recaptured the southern port in July, the coalition began a ground operation which has seen the rebels pushed back from five southern provinces, although they still control Sanaa and much of the north and centre.