\n<\/p>\n
Mokha residents said Houthi fighters moved into the city after fierce clashes with pro-government forces on Wednesday night, prompting many families to flee their homes.<\/p>\n
“The takeover came without warning. Panic spread throughout the area, forcing people to flee amid distressing scenes of injured people lying in the streets with no-one there to help them,” one man told BBC Arabic’s Middle East Lifeline programme.<\/p>\n
Another man said that Houthi fighters were patrolling the streets of Mokha on Thursday, while government offices and shops were closed.<\/p>\n
“At the moment, we don’t know what Ansar Allah will do,” he added, using the group’s formal name. “Everyone is afraid for their safety.”<\/p>\n
Many displaced families are heading east towards the city of Aden, where Yemen’s internationally recognised Presidential Leadership Council and government are based.<\/p>\n
“We fled with our children and kept running. We have no bedding, no home, nothing with us. Everything was destroyed within an hour. They didn’t even give us a chance or warn us beforehand,” one woman told BBC Arabic.<\/p>\n
“We are women with no means of defending ourselves, and we have innocent children with us.”<\/p>\n
There was no immediate confirmation of Mokha’s capture from the Houthis.<\/p>\n
But the group’s Supreme Political Council said in a statement on Thursday that clashes had “ceased in the western coast districts after the expulsion of Saudi enemy mobilisations”, according to Houthi-run Al Masirah TV.<\/p>\n
Tarek Salah, leader of the pro-government National Resistance Forces, also said he had moved his command centre on the west coast to a “safe location”.<\/p>\n
He added that his forces had paid “a heavy price in recent days in the face of a Houthi offensive that was planned and supported by Iran”.<\/p>\n
A Yemeni military source told AFP news agency that Houthi fighters had also seized Zuqar Island in the Red Sea, about 80km north-west of Mokha, after launching a barrage of rockets and a ground assault using boats.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the head of the Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad al-Alimi, urged Arab states and other countries to help protect Yemen’s coasts and restore state control.<\/p>\n
The Houthis’ Supreme Political Council asserted its “right to defend [Yemen’s] sovereignty and territorial waters while simultaneously reassuring the international community that navigation in the Red Sea remains safe”.<\/p>\n
However, the Houthi-run humanitarian operations co-ordination centre also stressed that the embargo on Saudi ships remained in place.<\/p>\n
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said Saudi warplanes carried out 64 strikes across the western provinces of Taiz, Hudaydah, Marib and Jawf over the previous 24 hours.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from the Saudi military.<\/p>\n
However, the spokesman of the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states fighting in Yemen said on Wednesday evening that it would respond to a series of Houthi missile and drone attacks on the south-western Saudi cities of Khamis Mushait, Abha and Jazan.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Houthis launched dozens of drones and missiles at southern Saudi Arabia, injuring 73 civilians and causing fires at several oil facilities that led to a temporary halt in operations, according to Saudi authorities.<\/p>\n
The Houthis said they were retaliating for dozens of Saudi air strikes on territory they control in recent days, including one on a prison in the town of Hazm in Jawf province on Monday that they said killed at least 23 civilians.<\/p>\n
The Saudi-led coalition has backed Yemen’s government against the Houthis in the country’s devastating civil war for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
A four-year-old informal ceasefire began to unravel in July, when the Houthis announced a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and began missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.<\/p>\n
The Houthis said they were retaliating for a Saudi blockade of ports and airports in their territory, as well as an air strike on Sanaa airport that they blamed on the kingdom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n