Sanaa, October 01: Yemeni troops pressed their seven-week-old offensive against Shiite rebels in the northern mountains on Thursday a day after fierce fighting left more than 30 people dead.
Heavy gunbattles erupted in Saada province on the Saudi border while artillery pounded rebel positions in Amran province further south, commanders said.
On Wednesday, 28 rebels were killed in clashes at Uqab, west of Saada town, while four soldiers and five rebels died in fighting in the Harf Sufyan district of Amran, security sources said.
The army launched Operation Scorched Earth against the rebels on August 11 in a bid to finally crush an uprising that has left thousands dead since it first broke out in 2004.
The United Nations estimates that 55,000 people have fled their homes.
The authorities accuse the rebels of seeking to restore the Zaidi Shiite imamate that was overthrown in a republican coup in 1962, triggering an eight-year civil war. The rebels deny the charge.
A minority in mainly Sunni Yemen, the Zaidis are the majority community in the north. President Ali Abdullah Saleh is himself a Zaidi.
—Agencies