At least 20 dead as Houthis advance in Aden

Houthi rebels and their allies advanced in the heart of Yemen's second city Aden in heavy fighting that killed at least 20 people, medical and security sources said on Tuesday.

A Saudi-led coalition meanwhile pressed airstrikes for a seventh straight day since announcing a halt to its bombing campaign last Tuesday, an AFP correspondent and witnesses reported.

The rebels and their allies have lost 200 dead to the strikes since they began on 26 March, a spokesman said, accusing the coalition of escalating not ending its air war.

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In Aden, forces loyal to exiled President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi were pushed back in the city's central Khor Maksar district as the rebels overran Hadi's family home and the German and Russian consulates, a local official said.

Nine rebels were killed in the fighting, a source close to them said.

Eleven dead were brought into government-run hospitals, the city's health chief al-Khader Lasswar said, without specifying whether they were pro-Hadi militiamen or civilians.

Witnesses also reported airstrikes on the rebels and their allies in oil-rich Marib province, east of the capital, around third city Taez, and in the Red Sea port of Hodeida.

A spokesman for the pro-rebel armed forces said that 112 soldiers, 43 policemen and 45 Houthi militia had been killed in five weeks of coalition airstrikes.

In a statement carried by the rebel-controlled Saba news agency late Monday, Brigadier General Sharaf Luqman accused Riyadh of "moving into a new stage" of its air war, not halting it as promised.

The rebels have said they will not return to UN-brokered peace talks until the airstrikes end.