SAanaa, Yemen - Over 70 followers of a slain rebel preacher were killed and the army sustained dozens of casualties in two days of fierce clashes in northwest Yemen that ended with government forces taking control of rebel outposts, tribal sources said.
"More than 70 followers of (Sheikh Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi) were killed in the fighting which went on throughout Wednesday and until Thursday night" in Saada province, where the two sides have been locked in combat since March 28, one source told AFP, requesting anonymity.
"Their bodies were found in the mountain hideouts from which they had been resisting authorities," he said.
"Dozens of troops were (also) killed or wounded, particularly when counter-terrorism units parachuted onto mountain tops overlooking the rebels' strongholds in Razamat and Wadi Nushur (Nushur Valley) on Thursday," the source said.
The sources said government forces stormed rebel positions in Razamat, Wadi Nushur and Al-Shafia, wresting control of the outposts Thursday night.
"Troops are combing the area to hunt down the leaders of the rebellion, starting with Badr Eddin al-Huthi," father of the preacher killed by the army last year and who authorities say is the rebels' spiritual leader, according to the tribal source.
Government forces are also trying to track down the ground commanders of the rebels from the Faithful Youth movement, chiefly Abdullah Ayedh al-Razami, Yussef al-Madani and the preacher's brother Abdul Malak, they said.
Pro-government tribal sources said dozens of militants have been rounded up, mostly young men aged 18 to 22.
Apart from the undetermined number of government forces which fell in the clashes of the last two days, more than 180 people have now been reported killed in the fighting. Dozens more have been injured on both sides.
Hussein al-Huthi, a radical preacher from the minority Zaidi community, was killed by the army last September, nearly three months after he started a rebellion in the mountainous northwest.
The uprising, near the border with Saudi Arabia, triggered clashes which left more than 400 people dead.
The Zaidis are a moderate Shiite Muslim sect dominant in northwest Yemen but in the minority in the mainly Sunni country.
The state SABA news agency quoted a local official in Saada province as saying the latest army onslaught came after a mediation committee set up at the request of President Ali Abdullah Saleh failed to persuade the rebels to surrender.
The panel, made up of Muslim scholars, tribal chieftains and other prominent figures, "failed to convince Badr Eddin al-Huthi and his rebel supporters to turn themselves in and cease carrying out subversive acts and attacks against government and public facilities, as well as security and military" targets, the official said.
He said the committee was unable to broker a solution despite promising the rebels safety because of the "obstinacy" of Huthi and his men, and their "refusal to respond to efforts to stop the bloodshed and end the strife they started in the area."
Authorities had similarly accused Hussein al-Huthi of seeking to foment sectarian strife, but he told AFP last July the conflict was a result of his anti-US stand.