Yemeni retaliatory attacks leave 5 Saudi regime forces dead

At least five Saudi soldiers have been killed when Yemeni army soldiers and fighters from allied Popular Committees launched an attack in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border region of Jizan as they continue their retaliatory raids against the Riyadh regime’s aerial bombardment campaign.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported that Yemeni forces and their allies fatally shot the soldiers in al-Qamar village of the region, located 967 kilometers southwest of the capital Riyadh, on Thursday evening.

An unnamed Yemeni military source also said that a number of Saudi troopers lost their lives and sustained injuries, when Yemeni soldiers and their allies launched a salvo of artillery rounds at Ramazah military camp in Jizan.

Separately, Yemeni army soldiers and Popular Committees fighters targeted the gatherings of Saudi soldiers in al-Tal’a Rajla area of the kingdom’s Najran region, located 844 kilometers (524 miles) south of Riyadh, inflicting heavy losses on Saudi forces.

Moreover, scores of Saudi-backed militiamen loyal to former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, were killed in the Khabb wa ash Sha’af district of Yemen’s northern province of al-Jawf, when the explosion of two roadside bombs destroyed their vehicles.

On Wednesday, six civilians, including women and children, were killed when Saudi military aircraft hit a home in Hajlan area of Yemen’s central province of Ma’rib.

In the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah, Saudi airstrikes targeted a gas station in the populated district of Garrahi, killing at least two women and injuring dozens of residents.

At least 13,600 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen in 2015. Much of the country’s infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

The Saudi-led war has also triggered a deadly cholera epidemic across Yemen.

According to the World Health Organization’s latest tally, the cholera outbreak has killed 2,167 people since the end of April 2017 and is suspected to have infected 841,906.

In November 2017, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said more than 11 million children in Yemen were in acute need of aid, stressing that it was estimated that every 10 minutes a child died of a preventable disease there.

Additionally, the UN has described the current level of hunger in Yemen as “unprecedented,” emphasizing that 17 million people were food insecure in the country.

The world body says that 6.8 million, meaning almost one in four people, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.