Saudi-backed militiamen meanwhile exchanged heavy artillery fire with their Houthi foes in the northern approaches to Aden on Wednesday.

The offensive came as Aden’s worldwide airport re-opened on Wednesday, with a Saudi Arabian plane landing with military supplies.

Basalma told journalists on Monday that a UAE technical team had arrived to fix the tower and passenger terminal at Aden global airport, heavily damaged in clashes.

The battle at Aden worldwide Airport broke out on 19 March, when the Yemen Army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh attacked the airport, which was defended by soldiers and guards supporting exiled Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Over the past week there has been a shift in the balance on the ground in Aden in favour of pro-Hadi forces, which had previously struggled to halt the advance of better-equipped rebels.

Fighters for the Popular Resistance – an anti-Houthi southern militia – have largely been responsible for the push. “They needed heavy weapons like the ones that were sent”, he said.

Fighting was most intense around the rebel-controlled military base of Al-Anad in the province of Lahj.

Meantime, Riyadh continued its air raids against Yemeni people, killing at least 10 civilians in the provinces of Sa’ada and Sana’a.

A Saudi military cargo plane is seen at the global airport of Yemen’s southern port city of Aden on July 22, 2015.

Nearly four months of air raids and civil war have killed more than 3,500 people in Yemen.

The United Nations has declared Yemen a level-three humanitarian emergency, the highest on its scale. The world body warned at the time that the impoverished country was just “one step away from famine”.