SANA, Yemen — Yemeni security officials said Monday that Saudi-led airstrikes and clashes killed about 40 Shi'ite rebels and their allies over the past day.
The officials, who are neutral in a conflict that has split the security forces, said the airstrikes and fighting took place mostly in Ibb province into Monday, and near the cities of Mocha and Taiz. The raids in Taiz also killed four civilians.
Anti-rebel fighters said 13 of their own forces were killed and more than 20 wounded in the Taiz fighting.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.
Yemen's fighting pits the rebels, known as Houthis, and allied army units against forces loyal to the internationally recognized government, as well as southern separatists and militants.
In a separate development, the Defense Department announced that it had transferred five lower-level Yemeni detainees from the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba to the United Arab Emirates. The United States had held each for nearly 14 years as wartime prisoners, and none had been charged with a crime.
The transfers reduced the detainee population at the prison to 107. As many as 17 other proposed transfers of lower-level detainees are in the bureaucratic pipeline, an official familiar with internal deliberations said Sunday.
The resettlement of the Yemeni detainees was the first of its kind to the United Arab Emirates, which had previously taken in just one former Guantánamo detainee, in 2008 — its own citizen.