Bodies of 103 foreign troops recovered from Yemen’s Safer airport

A top Yemeni tribal source says the bodies of 103 foreign troopers have been recovered from a military airport in the central Yemeni province of Ma’rib, where they came under a rocket attack by Yemeni army forces and allied Popular Committees.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities have identified 45 Emirati nationals as well as five Bahraini citizens among the soldiers slain in al-Safer airport, adding that the remaining corpses belong to individuals that hailed from other Arab nations, Arabic-language al-Masirah satellite television network reported.

He further noted that at least 70 people, mostly Emirati soldiers, also sustained injures in the Friday afternoon’s incident, and some of them are in critical condition.

The source said more than 40 armored vehicles and military trucks were destroyed in the attack. Three Apache combat helicopters also went up in flames.

Meanwhile on Saturday morning, Saudi fighter jets pounded a residential neighborhood in al- Sabain district of Sana’a province, leaving five Yemeni civilians dead.

At the same time, Yemeni forces have smashed an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist network that planned to assassinate a number of political, security and military figures, and also target vital installations and infrastructure in a bid to further destabilize the crisis-hit Arab country.

Informed sources, requesting not to be named, said Yemeni soldiers recovered more than 300 grenades, sixty rockets, a considerable amount of ammunition for light and heavy weapons, binoculars, mortar shells and artillery rounds from the detained Takfiri terrorists.

Yemeni soldiers backed by Popular Committees fighters wrested control of the strategic Jebel al-Wa’ash mountain overlooking the southwestern Yemeni city of Taiz, situated 346 kilometers (214 miles) south of the capital, Sana’a, on Friday, killing and injuring an unspecified number of Saudi soldiers in the process.

Yemeni soldiers and allied forces also launched a barrage of rockets at Abu Saloul, Khazan and Khojrah military bases in Saudi Arabia’s Tawal region on the border with Yemen, but there were no immediate reports of casualties and the extent of damage inflicted.

Additionally, Yemeni forces fired six missiles at Bin Yalin military camp in the southwestern Saudi city of Najran in retaliation for the kingdom’s relentless airstrikes against various regions in Yemen. No reports of casualties were available.

Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen on March 26 – without a UN mandate – in a bid to undermine Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to the country’s fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

Nearly 4,500 people have been killed in the Yemeni conflict, the World Health Organization said on August 11. Local Yemeni sources, however, say the fatality figure is much higher.

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