Yemen's internationally recognised government said its forces advanced against Houthi fighters in Marib and al-Jawf provinces on Saturday, 7 November, on the same day Houthi officials said air strikes on a village near the capital, Sanaa, killed at least 27 people.

Government forces said troops backed by warplanes and drones fought for hours to halt Houthi advances in Marib province, destroying fortifications and combat equipment. They said troops were also pushing into Houthi-held areas of al-Jawf, where fighting entered a third consecutive day as part of the Dawn of Yemen operation, launched more than a month ago to retake territory from the Houthis.

The government's military spokesman, Colonel Majed al-Nazili, said the army had carried out 875 attacks on Houthi positions on Saturday, claiming to have killed about 130 Houthi commanders and fighters and to have destroyed or disabled 50 vehicles and missile launchers. Al Jazeera reported that it could not independently verify those claims, and they should be treated as the government's account of the fighting rather than confirmed fact.

Independent analysis supports the broad picture of a government advance in al-Jawf. The Institute for the Study of War reported that geolocated imagery from 7 November showed government-aligned forces on the Jabal Dahida mountain range, following their seizure of additional positions there on 6 November. The institute said the forces announced on 7 November that they were continuing to advance along the range while clearing Houthi mines and improvised explosive devices, in what it assessed as a shaping operation for an offensive to recapture al Hazm, the capital of Jawf governorate. Government forces also repelled Houthi efforts on 7 November to retake positions in Wadi Halhalan, in Marib, that they had seized the day before.

Meanwhile, strikes on Saturday killed at least 27 people and wounded about 36 others in al-Shariya village, in the Bani Hushaysh district about 15 kilometres northeast of Sanaa, according to the Houthi-run Health Ministry. Its spokesman, Anees al-Asbahi, told the Associated Press that most of those killed and wounded were women and children, and that he expected the toll to rise as search and rescue work continued. He said civilians were still buried under the rubble of houses hit in the strikes, and that later strikes targeted emergency workers trying to pull survivors out. The toll rose through the day, from 22 dead to at least 25, before the ministry's latest update put the count at 27 killed and 36 wounded.

The Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out the strikes. Neither the Associated Press nor Reuters could independently verify that allegation, and Saudi Arabia's Information Ministry did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree later claimed the group had carried out attacks against Saudi Arabia in response, linking them to the village strikes and to a deadly attack on a market in Taiz province on Friday, in which Houthi officials said at least 30 people were killed. The Houthis and Yemen's Saudi-backed military each blamed the other side for that market attack, and neither claim was independently verified.

Reporting from Sanaa, Al Jazeera said the Houthis put the civilian death toll from the past two days at 55, blaming Saudi air strikes, while Yemeni government officials held the Houthis responsible for most of the casualties. The competing claims underline how hard it is to establish firm facts in a war where both sides control the flow of information from their own territory.

The fighting comes as Yemen's civil war grows more intense after a years-long truce fell apart over the summer. The war dates to 2014, when the Houthis took Sanaa and drove out the internationally recognised government, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene. United Nations figures put the death toll at 150,000 or more. The Iran-backed Houthis control Sanaa and much of northern and western Yemen, while Saudi-backed forces are based mainly in the south and east. The Houthis also continued to target Saudi critical infrastructure on 6 and 7 November, according to the Institute for the Study of War, as the conflict spills across Yemen's borders. Al Jazeera first reported the government advances and the Sanaa toll on 7 November.