Yemen airs video of captured Saudi soldiers

Yemeni forces have released footage showing five Saudi soldiers caught by Houthi Ansarullah fighters near the border with Saudi Arabia, which has been waging war on Yemen since March 2015.

Five captives appear in civilian clothes in footage aired on Yemen’s al-Masirah television on Friday.

They identify themselves by name, rank and unit and give the specific location where they had been captured.

The five were captured either in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border region of Najran or Asir. It was not specified when they had been captured, however.

Saudi Arabia waged the war on Yemen in an attempt to bring back to power a former Yemeni government and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The United Nations (UN) in August put the death toll from the war at about 10,000.

Riyadh has been using internationally-banned cluster bombs in its air assaults against the impoverished country.

Cluster bombs like ‘wife beating’ to Saudi envoy

Earlier, on Thursday, the brassy Saudi ambassador to the United States evaded answering a question about Riyadh’s use of cluster munitions against the Yemeni people.

On the sideline of the annual Arab-US Policymakers Conference in Washington DC last week, a reporter asked Abdullah al-Saud, the Saudi envoy to the US, whether Riyadh would “continue to use cluster weapons in Yemen.”

“This is like the question, ‘Will you stop beating your wife?’” Saud replied in English, laughing.

Saudi Arabia is known for its medieval practices against women, but it was not clear what the Saudi ambassador meant by drawing that parallel.

When pressed on the same point, Saud said, “You are political operators… I’m not a politician.”

He said Riyadh would continue bombing Yemen “no matter what it takes,” in the only part of his remarks where he was clear what he meant.

The United Nations (UN)’s human rights office has recently called for an independent international investigation of cases of human rights violations in the Saudi war on Yemen, confirming the use of banned cluster bombs by Saudi Arabia against Yemeni residential areas.

On May 6, Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized the United States for selling cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia.

The UK was also rapped by Amnesty International over supplying Riyadh with British-made cluster bombs, which have likewise been used against civilians in Yemen.

Separately, on Saturday, Saudi military aircraft carried out a new round of strikes against several areas across Yemen, prompting more retaliatory attacks by Yemeni armed forces.

Saudi fighter jets launched several airstrikes against the Razeh district in the northwestern province of Sa’ada as well as the Nihm and Hamdan districts in the western province of Sana’a.

However, there were no immediate reports of causalities from the air raids.

Meanwhile, the Yemeni army launched a retaliatory artillery attack against several Saudi military bases in the Jizan region, inflicting heavy losses on them.

According to al-Masirah, Yemeni troops managed to destroy a military vehicle used by the Saudis in the region, killing all of its occupants.