Yemeni soldier was killed and another injured while defending their position against an onslaught by Yemen’s Houthi militia on Sunday evening in the southern province of Dhale, the latest in Houthi efforts to grab control of new areas in the province.

The Dhale Axis Media Centre, which is linked with the pro-independence Southern Transitional Council, said that the Houthis assaulted its troops in the Al-Husha District, northwest of Dhale, sparking a battle that killed one of its soldiers and some Houthis and injured others.

After failing to advance on the ground, the Houthis extensively bombarded southern troops in an attempt to recover the remains of their members who were killed in the combat, according to the center, adding that the bodies of Houthis fighters are still dispersed around the battlefield.

Dozens of Houthis and Yemeni government troops have been killed or wounded during the past couple of months in Houthi attacks in the province of Dhale. Hostilities in Yemen have decreased dramatically since April 2022, when the UN-brokered ceasefire was implemented, bringing to an end years of brutal combat between warring groups in Yemen that killed over 100,000 people and displaced millions.

The Houthis’ assaults on ships in the Red Sea, as well as the US reclassifying the Houthis as terrorists, dealt a huge blow to UN-brokered peace efforts to strike a deal to end the Yemen war.

On Monday, maritime agencies that track ship assaults received no information of Houthi strikes in the Red Sea, Bab Al-Mandab Strait, or Gulf of Aden, and the Yemeni militia did not claim responsibility for firing missiles and drones at ships. 

Since November, the Houthis have seized a commercial ship and launched hundreds of drones and missiles against commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea, claiming that their operations are in support of Palestinians. 

Meanwhile, the family of Abdul Wahab Qatran, an outspoken judge abducted by the Houthis earlier this year, says that the Houthis are preventing them from accessing him at the detention facility and refusing to provide information on his health status.

Mohammed, Qatran’s son, said on Sunday that captors in the Houthi security and intelligence prison in Sanaa rejected his repeated requests to allow the family to visit his father, despite allowing relatives of other prisoners to visit them twice a week during Ramadan.

The captors also told him that they had orders from “higher” authorities to isolate his father.

“What scares me the most is that something terrible happened to my father, and they do not want us to know,” Mohammed said on his Facebook page. 

In January, armed Houthis abducted Qatran from his home in Sanaa, only hours after he denounced the Houthis for beating a Yemeni journalist.

Qatran is also known for standing by activists who have been mistreated by the Houthis, as well as denouncing the Houthis for neglecting to pay public workers in regions under their control and failing to repair public services.

Amnesty International called on March 12 for “urgent” action to free Qatran from Houthi arrest, saying that the Houthis had placed him in solitary confinement and denied him access to a lawyer.