Yemen's internationally recognised government has claimed that its forces killed or wounded about 190 Houthi fighters in hundreds of air and artillery attacks across six governorates, as fighting intensifies in the country's renewed war.

Military spokesman Majed Abdullah al-Nuzaili said on Tuesday that government forces carried out at least 29 air strikes and 39 drone attacks, fired 62 rockets and launched 744 artillery attacks against Houthi positions. He said the operations targeted Houthi fighters in Lahij, Taiz, Marib, al-Jawf, Hajjah and al-Bayda.

"Initial field reports indicate that about 190 Houthi commanders and fighters were killed or injured," al-Nuzaili said. He added that up to 130 vehicles and other combat assets used by the Iran-allied group were damaged or destroyed.

Claims could not be verified

The figures are the government's own account of the fighting and have not been independently confirmed. Al Jazeera, which reported the spokesman's statement, said it could not verify the battlefield claims. No independent casualty count for the latest round of attacks has been published.

The Houthis, for their part, issued competing claims on the same day. Their spokesman, Yahya Saree, said Houthi forces had killed and wounded a large number of government-aligned fighters in attacks in the al-Madaribah and Ras al-Ara areas of Lahij governorate, and that dozens more government troops were killed and wounded in al-Jawf.

Saree also accused Yemen's Saudi-backed forces of launching 109 air strikes and missile attacks on the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, and on Houthi positions in al-Jawf, Saada, Taiz, Lahij and Marib. He said those attacks killed and wounded a large number of women and children. The Saudi-led coalition did not immediately confirm the strikes.

Missiles fired towards Riyadh

The fighting inside Yemen has been accompanied by attacks beyond its borders. Earlier in the day, the Saudi-led coalition said it had intercepted two missiles fired by the Houthis towards the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and another aimed at the kingdom's southern region.

The Houthis said they had targeted Riyadh and an Aramco oil facility at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. The coalition has supported the Yemeni government's ground campaign with air strikes, while the Houthis have fired missiles at the kingdom, targeting airports and oil facilities.

The latest clashes are part of Operation Dawn of Yemen, the counteroffensive launched by Yemen's government last month to retake territory lost to the Houthis in September. Full-scale fighting reignited in Yemen that month, when the Houthis made gains that tightened their grip on the Red Sea coast. The group, also known as Ansar Allah, seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

Human cost keeps rising

Behind the competing battlefield claims, the human cost of the renewed fighting continues to grow. According to the World Health Organization, at least 1,771 people have been killed in the hostilities in Yemen since August, with at least 7,959 wounded. More than 300,000 people have also been displaced.

The war is also squeezing civilians in besieged cities. In Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city and home to about one million people, the Houthis have blocked the entry of food, fuel and medical supplies since early October. The city's governor, Nabil Shamsan, has warned that 120 health centres have stopped operating and another 66 are close to shutting down, while at least 23 trucks were damaged or overturned in the past two weeks while seeking alternative routes into the city.

The fighting in Yemen comes amid wider regional tensions triggered by the United States and Israel's war on Iran, which began in February. Yemen's government is backed by Saudi Arabia, while the Houthis are aligned with Iran. With both sides claiming heavy losses inflicted on the other and neither account independently verified, the scale of the latest fighting remains unclear, but the displacement and casualty figures reported by international agencies point to a conflict that is again exacting a heavy price from civilians.