Yemeni Popular Forces Vow to Fire More Missiles at Saudi Arabia

“Ansarullah has a warehouse full of missiles which can continue hitting the targets inside Saudi Arabia until the end of war with the Riyadh government,” Ansarullah officials said.

Meantime, Yemeni Army Spokesman Brigadier General Sharaf Luqman also threatened Saudi Arabia with an increasing number of missile strikes.

On Friday a prominent Yemeni analyst underlined the country’s army and popular forces’ growing military power, and said their missiles which can now hit the Saudi bases anywhere inside the kingdom are changing the balance of power in the war.

“When the Yemenis fired the Borkan-1 missiles on Jeddah, some kind of power balance and deterrence was created, since with this action, the Yemeni forces showed that the war has entered a new phase and they made the enemy understand that extensive regions inside Saudi Arabia are now within their reach,” Ahmad al-Shami said.

He, meantime, stressed that the Yemeni army and popular forces merely target the Saudi military bases and they have and will never attack the civilians.

Also on Wednesday, another prominent analyst said that the Yemeni forces are developing their missile power to target Riyadh and Dubai in the future.

“The Yemeni forces have increased their missile and military capabilities and expanded the range of their military operations against the enemies,” Seyed Sadeq al-Sharafi said.

Noting that continued war in Yemen will further complicate the situation of the Saudis and make the Yemeni forces stronger, he said, “The range of the army and popular committees’ missiles has increased to hit targets in Jeddah, meaning that they are likely to hit targets in Riyadh and beyond as well as Dubai and other sensitive regions soon in future.”

Sharafi expressed confidence that the balance of power is changing and the Saudis’ failure is imminent, and said, “The Saudis are moving towards full collapse, while the Yemeni nation is going towards victory and gaining more power in the military and defense fields.”

His remarks came after the Yemeni army and popular forces launched a Borkan-1 ballistic missile attack from Sa’ada province to a Saudi Airbase in Jeddah late October.

Yemeni soldiers and their allies fired a Borkan-1 (Volcano-1) missile towards King Abdulaziz International Airport, located 19 kilometers North of the Western Saudi port city of Jeddah, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.

A military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, later told the official Saba news agency that the 12.5-meter-long missile had hit its target accurately and left massive destruction at the airport.

Saudi media outlets, however, reported that the kingdom’s missile systems intercepted and destroyed the solid propellant and Scud-type missile before it could cause any damage.

They said the projectile was launched at 9 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) from Yemen’s mountainous Northwestern area of Sa’ada.

The Saudi military also claimed that the Yemeni missile was fired toward the holy city of Mecca, but the Ansarullah movement rejected the claim.

An informed Ansarullah source said that the missile was aimed at King Abdulaziz International Airport close to Jeddah, which hosts the kingdom’s royal forces.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen since March 2015 to restore power to fugitive president Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 12,000 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

According to several reports, the Saudi-led air campaign against Yemen has driven the impoverished country towards humanitarian disaster.