Yemenis kill 4 Saudi troops, attack military base
Yemeni soldiers and allied Houthi fighters have killed four Saudi troops in sniper fire in the kingdom’s extreme southwest in retaliation for new attacks on the impoverished nation.
The allied forces gunned down one Saudi trooper at the al-Mo’annaq military outpost in the kingdom’s Jizan region on Saturday, Yemen’s al-Masirah television network reported. Separately, Yemeni sharpshooters killed three more Saudi troops in a blitz against military bases in Najran.
A Saudi military vehicle was also destroyed while traveling in the Midi Desert in Jizan.
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Al-Masirah published a video, released by Yemen’s War Media, showing mercenaries fleeing the al-Qavieh base in Jizan on board two vehicles, leaving behind their equipment. A Yemeni army unit then goes there and takes away some of the accoutrement.
Yemeni forces have been responding to Saudi Arabia’s more than two years of invasion launched in support of a former government. Thousands of civilians have been killed in the war which has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and put the country on the brink of a famine.
The Yemenis have stepped up their retaliatory strikes against Saudi mercenaries, who have been trying to push deeper into the impoverished country after occupying the Red Sea port of Aden.
On Saturday, loyalist forces backed by Saudi Arabia launched an assault to seize the Khaled Ibn al-Walid base from Houthi fighters and their allies near Yemen’s west coast.
At least 25 loyalists of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Houthi fighters were killed in clashes around the key military located 30 kilometers from the Red Sea town of Mokha which pro-Saudi forces captured in February.
Military and medical sources told the French news agency AFP that Saudi warplanes had bombed Houthi positions as they tried to push back the advancing mercenaries.
Nine Houthi fighters were killed and two others wounded in twin Saudi airstrikes targeting three vehicles bringing reinforcements to the camp, the report said. A further 12 Houthis and four Hadi loyalists were killed in fighting overnight, it added.
The camp, one of the biggest in Yemen, sits on a key road linking Mokha to the Houthi-controlled port city of Hudaydah and Ta’izz.
