ADEN: Government forces have launched an offensive backed by air support from the Saudi-led Arab coalition to oust Huthi rebels from around Yemen's third largest city Taez, military sources said.
A government military source said 23 rebels including a commander were killed on Friday.
Most of Taez is government-controlled, but many parts of the surrounding area remain in the hands of the Iran-backed Shiite Huthis.
"The national army has decided to launch a major military operation with the support of the coalition forces... to liberate the province," Taez governor Amin Ahmad Mahmud said in a speech broadcast late Thursday.
Government-run Saba news agency, citing a military source, said loyalist forces managed to "clean up" areas around the city Friday as part of a "major military operation to complete the liberation of Taez province".
Huthi commander Abu Azzam was killed along with 22 other rebels in coalition air raids, the government source told AFP.
The military official said the raids targeted positions near Taez airport and Aman mountain east of the city.
Saudi Arabia and its allies have come under mounting international pressure over the humanitarian impact of their nearly three-year-old military intervention.
More than 9,200 people have been killed in Yemen since the intervention began, most of them civilians, according to World Health Organization figures.
More than three-quarters of Yemen's 29 million population need humanitarian aid, with some 8.4 million at risk of famine, the UN humanitarian affairs office has said.
The coalition this week pledged USD 1.5 billion in new aid for Yemen after the United Nations launched a record appeal to address what it says is the world's worst humanitarian crisis.