Yemenis Fire 7 Missiles at Saudi Bases in Jizan, Asir
The Yemeni forces fired five Zelzal-1 (Earthquake-1) missiles at Saudi military positions near Alab border crossing in the kingdom's southwestern region of Asir on Sunday, Yemen’s al-Masirah news website reported.
A military source said that the attack left an unspecified number of Saudi troops dead and injured, the report added. Saudi authorities usually keep the number of their war casualties a secret.
The Yemeni forces fired two more missiles at military positions east of al-Nar Mountain in Jizan.
Just days earlier, they foiled a massive Saudi offensive in the city of Sa'ada, killing at least 90 mercenaries and injuring over 100 others.
Riyadh, under the order of its de-facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, leads a coalition of Arab nations -- including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- that began indiscriminately pounding targets across Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement and bringing former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi’s government back to power.
According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of about 56,000 Yemenis.
The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has warned that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
A number of Western countries, the US and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply Riyadh with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.
Houthis and their allies, however, remain steadfast in their resolve to fight off the enemy with a powerful arsenal of domestically-developed missiles that have struck as far as the Saudi capital.
According to Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, a video circulating on social media shows Emirati forces constructing a private port inside a military base they have been building near Socotra Island's main port, which is run by Hadi loyalists.
Socotra, located near Somalia in the Gulf of Aden, is protected by the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO as a world heritage site, meaning that even the Yemeni government is not allowed to interfere in the natural habitats and places of natural beauty in the area.
In May, UAE forces landed in Socotra along with tanks, armored transports and heavy equipment in a move that sparked the anger of the island’s residents.
Yemeni websites also reported that the Emirati troops operate a private port in Yemen’s Mukalla to transport detainees and unknown materials to and from the city. The port in Mukalla is also used to transport the American investigators who are interrogating Yemeni detainees held in secret prisons run by the UAE, the sources added.
A Persian Gulf country rich in oil, the UAE has initiated similar extraterritorial projects in other areas including in Eritrea, Djibouti, Somaliland and the Yemeni islet of Perim.
