ADEN (AFP) - At least 28 Huthi insurgents and 12 Yemeni soldiers were killed Tuesday in the southern province of Shabwa as government forces pushed to capture a rebel enclave, military officials said.



The fighting flared when forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi attacked rebels in Bayhan district, on the border between Shabwa and Marib provinces.



Bayhan is the only part of Shabwa province still controlled by the Iran-backed rebels after government forces supported by the Saudi-led Arab coalition last year expelled them from five southern provinces.



"The death toll of the Huthis has reached 28 while 12 soldiers of the legitimate forces were killed," a military official said.



Military officials said government forces backed by coalition warplanes drove the rebels out of several positions in the area, adding that 14 insurgents were also captured.



The Yemen conflict has killed some 7,000 people since the Saudi-led intervention in March 2015, according to the United Nations.



The coalition began the military campaign against the rebels after they closed in on Hadi in his refuge in the southern city of Aden, forcing him to flee to Riyadh.



The rebels and allied renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh continue to control the capital Sanaa, which they overran in September 2014, along with several mainly northern regions.

</s>Pro-government forces on Monday recaptured two military sites in Sanaa’s eastern Nahm directorate from Houthi militiamen and their allies, according to assertions by the Yemeni army.

“Our forces advanced on Nahm where they liberated the village of Sarhan and the Mount Qarn Wadaa region,” the army said in a statement posted on its official Facebook page.

“The Saudi-led coalition also conducted two airstrikes on Houthi targets, destroying three Houthi vehicles,” the statement read without providing a death toll.

“A second airstrike by coalition aircraft destroyed several more vehicles and Houthi equipment,” it added without elaborating.

The Houthi leadership and allied forces of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh have yet to issue a comment on the army’s claims.

Yemen has been wracked by chaos since late 2014, when the Houthis and their allies overran capital Sanaa and other parts of the country.

The conflict escalated in mid-2015 when Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a major air campaign aimed at reversing Houthi military gains and shoring up Yemen’s embattled Saudi-backed government.

Two rounds of UN-backed peace talks have failed to resolve the conflict, in which thousands of Yemenis are believed to have been killed and an estimated 2.5 million forced to flee their homes.
Government forces push to capture a Houthi enclave in Bayhan District, on the border between Shabwa and Marib provinces, resulting at least 28 Houthi militants and 12 Yemeni soldiers killed.