A Saudi-led military coalition said Yemeni forces captured the airport of Hodeidah Wednesday, a milestone in their bid to wrest control of the Red Sea port from Houthi rebels without causing a humanitarian catastrophe.
The battle for Hodeidah is a potential turning point in Yemen’s more than three-year-old war, which pits the coalition of mostly Arab countries against the Houthis, an Iran-aligned political and cultural group that has expanded power from its northern stronghold to much of the country’s west since 2014. Coalition officials told state-backed news agencies in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that the city’s strategically important airport was fully captured.
“The airport was completely cleared and is under control now,” said Brig. Gen. Abdul Salaam al-Shehi, the commander of coalition forces on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, in a video tweeted by the U.A.E.’s news agency.
The coalition and its allies are betting that taking Hodeidah from the Houthis will force the rebels into a broader political compromise that removes them from power in the capital, San’a. The U.N.’s Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths is shuttling between Arab capitals to reach an agreement that spares Hodeidah from an all-out attack. Those talks have yet to produce a plan both sides accept, however.
Hodeidah’s port is an economic outlet for the Houthis that has helped the group sustain itself despite the conflict, bringing in as much as $40 million a month in revenue, Emirati officials say.
The city of 400,000 is also the entry point for much of Yemen’s commercial food imports and three-quarters of the humanitarian aid that millions of Yemenis rely on to survive. The U.N. said earlier this month that up to 250,000 people could die if the aid gateway is disrupted by battle.
There were still some pockets of fighting on the airport grounds Wednesday, according to military officials. But a person close to the coalition confirmed it had been fully secured after a Houthi counterattack in the morning. A village to the west of the airport had also been captured, the person said.
During the battle, the Houthis destroyed about five coalition vehicles with antitank guided missiles, the person said, and fired a missile that landed in the sea. The Houthis laid large numbers of mines in areas in and around the airport, which may take time to fully clear.
Gen. Shehi estimated that 250 Houthis had been killed in the operation, and said 87 were taken prisoner.
Houthi representatives couldn’t immediately be reached on Wednesday. They have denied previous reports of the airport being overtaken.
On Tuesday, Houthi spokesman Nasruddeen Amer played down the airport’s significance.
“We do not use this airport and no planes fly from it,” he said. “It does not have any strategic importance for us, but we defend it as part of Hodeidah.”
Following the airport’s capture, coalition-backed Yemeni forces were expected to move into the city’s neighborhoods from the south and cut off Houthi resupply lines from San’a to the east.
The U.A.E. and its coalition partners say they have developed a plan to allow humanitarian aid to flow even as the conflict intensifies.
The U.A.E. has 50,000 metric tons of food aid in Yemen to deploy as needed in Hodeidah, according to a letter it sent Tuesday to the U.N. That includes aid on 10 ships, 100 trucks and a planned “air bridge” to drop in up to 14,000 tons of food.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com
