Enemy of Islam Saudi Arabia confirms death of 3 troops in Yemen retaliatory attacks

Official sources in Riyadh have confirmed that three Saudi soldiers have been killed in 24 hours of retaliatory attacks by Yemen’s Ansarullah fighters and their army allies in the southern Saudi territory of Jizan.

A Saudi Interior Ministry statement said Tuesday that the soldiers were killed over the past 24 hours as their border post came under retaliatory shelling and rocket fire.

One soldier was killed on Monday and the other two died of injuries on Tuesday, the statement carried by the official SPA agency said.

The official confirmation comes shortly after Ansarullah fighters and allies announced the takeover of a Saudi military base and the death of several Saudi soldiers in the same territory.

Also on Tuesday, Yemen’s al-Mairah television network released a footage showing the advance of allied Yemeni forces tens of kilometers deep into Saudi territory.

The allied forces have intensified strikes on Jizan over the past days in a bid to retaliate against Riyadh’s airstrikes on civilians and residential areas across Yemen. On Sunday, Yemenis successfully targeted a gathering of high-ranking Saudi forces in the same area, killing Major General Abdulrahman al-Shahrani, who served as the commander of the Saudi army’s 18th Brigade.

Shahrani was the most notable Saudi officer killed since the kingdom launched its all-out military aggression against Yemen on March 26. Thousands of Yemenis, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Saudi attacks while more than a million have become homeless.

Ansarullah fighters and allies have managed to kill several Saudi soldiers over the past months with most of them coming through retaliatory cross-border rocket and missile fire.

On Monday, Riyadh confirmed in a similar statement that attacks from Yemen killed a Saudi soldier, identified as Thamer Nair Al’aqrat Al-Enzi, while three others were reported seriously injured.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, another Saudi soldier died when his patrol vehicle crashed along the southern border.

Saudi Arabia’s ongoing air campaign against Yemen, which lacks a UN mandate, is seen as an attempt to undermine Ansarullah and restore power to fugitive former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is currently in Riyadh.