ADEN // A commercial ship docked in Aden on Friday, the first to reach the former southern capital since Yemen’s devastating war came to the port city in March.

The Venus, operated by United Arab Shipping Co, carried a cargo of 350 containers of products ordered by businesses in Aden, said port deputy director Aref Al Shaabi.

“This signals the return of life to the port of Aden and this will benefit the city and southern provinces,” Mr Al Shaabi said.

Mr Al Shaabi said other ships were expected in Aden, the impoverished country’s main port and capital of the former South Yemen, in coming days.

Since pro-government forces recaptured the city from Houthi rebels last month, several planes carrying humanitarian aid have landed at Aden’s repaired international airport, which had been the scene of heavy clashes.

And several passenger flights have also arrived, allowing some residents to return home after having fled the violence.

Houthi rebels and troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh attacked and seized Aden in March after taking over the capital unopposed last year.

Their advance south prompted president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi to flee to Riyadh and sparked a Saudi Arabia-led aerial bombing campaign on rebel targets across the country.

Bolstered by heavy weaponry and troops from Gulf Arab countries as well as Yemeni fighters trained in Saudi Arabia, loyalists have retaken Aden and four other southern provinces.

Pro-Hadi forces have turned their sights on battling rebels for control of Yemen’s third city, Taez, seen as the gateway to the capital.

With fighting still raging across much of Yemen and a UN warning that the country is on the brink of famine, world powers have voiced concern over both Saudi Arabia-led air strikes and rebel shelling in the western port city of Hodeida.

Yemen’s war has killed nearly 4,500 people, many of them civilians, according to the United Nations.

UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien said he was concerned the air strikes could have a severe effect on an already dire humanitarian situation.

Some 80 per cent of Yemen’s population of 26 million are in desperate need of aid, and over a million have been driven from their homes in the nearly five-month war.

Amid the conflict in a country whose government has been exiled, an apparent US drone strike on Friday killed three suspected Al Qaeda militants in Mareb, east of Sanaa, tribal sources said.

The three were in a vehicle struck at dawn by a missile in the oil province’s desert region of Harib, the sources said.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has taken advantage of Yemen’s chaos to seize the southern port city of Mukalla, capital of the vast Hadramawt province.

* Agence France-Presse