The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen said Sunday it has killed 80 Huthi rebels in the past 24 hours in strikes around the northern pro-government bastion of Marib. The Saudi-led coalition has been reporting high death tolls in almost daily strikes since October aimed at repelling a rebel offensive on the city of Marib, the government’s last stronghold in the north. The Iran-backed Huthis rarely comment on the tolls, which have exceeded 3,000 in the past weeks, AFP cannot independently verify the coalition’s figures. “Nineteen military vehicles were destroyed and 80 terrorist elements eliminated” in the latest raids, the coalition said in a statement carried by the Saudi state news agency SPA. It said the operations were carried out in Sirwah to the west of Marib, Al-Jawf province to the north, and Al-Bayda province farther south. Meanwhile, according to a government military official on Sunday, 14 loyalists were killed and 23 others wounded in clashes in the past 24 hours in Marib province. The Huthis began a major push to seize Marib city in February and renewed their offensive in September. A loyalist military official acknowledged Tuesday that the Huthis have made advances on the ground. Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when the Huthis seized the capital Sanaa, prompting Saudi-led forces to intervene to prop up the government the following year. Tens of thousands of people have died and millions displaced in what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, a suspected US drone strike on Sunday killed three people in central Yemen, including two alleged Al-Qaeda jihadists, local government officials said. “A drone that is believed to be American targeted a car carrying a man, who is likely an Al-Qaeda member, and his wife, resulting in the injury of both,” a government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP. “Three people, a civilian and two suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen, who were in a vehicle that was heading to the site to assist the wounded were targeted in another strike and killed.” A second government official in the border region between the central provinces of Shabwa and Al-Bayda confirmed the two strikes and death toll. The United States considers Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch — Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — the most dangerous faction of the global jihadist network. A long-running US drone war against AQAP had intensified after ex-president Donald Trump took office in 2017. AQAP, and other militants loyal to the Islamic State group, have thrived in the chaos of Yemen’s civil war which pits the Saudi-backed government against Iran-allied Huthi rebels.