Yemeni army forces, supported by allied fighters from Popular Committees, have intercepted and targeted an unmanned aerial vehicle belonging to the Saudi-led military coalition in the skies over the country’s southwestern province of Ta’izz, in retaliation for the alliance’s military aggression against their conflict-stricken country.
The media bureau of the Houthi Ansarullah movement announced in a statement that Yemeni forces and their allies shot down the drone as it was on a reconnaissance mission over al-Wazi’iyah district on Wednesday afternoon.
Separately, dozens of Saudi-sponsored militiamen loyal to Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi were killed and injured when Yemeni army soldiers and their allies launched an offensive against their positions in the kingdom’s southern region of Asir.
An unnamed Yemeni military source told Arabic-language al-Masirah television network that Yemeni soldiers and allied fighters launched a domestically-developed Zelzal-1 (Earthquake-1) missile at a gathering of Saudi-led mercenaries in the Alab border crossing, leaving a large number of them killed and injured in the process.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of Hadi back to power and crushing Ansarullah movement.
The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 91,000 lives over the past four and a half years.
The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.
