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Yemen forces kill senior Saudi military commander

Wednesday, 16 December 2015 4:17 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 16 December 2015 5:41 PM ]

Saudi soldiers from an artillery unit fire shells toward Yemen from a post close to the Saudi-Yemeni border in southwestern Saudi Arabia, April 13, 2015. (AFP)

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah fighters, backed by allied army units, have killed a senior Saudi military commander in a cross border attack on the southwestern Najran region.

According to a Wednesday report by al-Ahsa news website, Ahmad al-Mabti, a senior military commander, was killed after Yemeni forces targeted a Saudi army base in Najran Province.

Yemen forces have surrounded the Saudi cities of Najran and Jizan as they push ahead with their retaliatory campaign against Riyadh's deadly aggression.

In recent months, the Ansarullah fighters and the allied army units have inflicted heavy casualties on Saudi military forces in the border regions.

Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry has also confirmed the deaths of several government troops in cross border attacks over the past few months.

Meanwhile, Saudi warplanes have continued to launch fresh airstrikes on Yemen in violation of a nascent truce, as a new round of talks aimed at ending the conflict in the country is underway in Switzerland.

Yemeni men gather around a crater caused by an air-strike by Saudi Arabia, in the capital Sana'a on November 29, 2015. (AFP photo)

The two warring sides to the conflict in Yemen have reportedly agreed during ongoing UN-brokered peace talks in Switzerland to exchange hundreds of prisoners. The agreement was made between members of the former Yemeni regime and the Houthi Ansarullah movement in the northwestern Swiss city of Biel on Wednesday.

The UN has said that the talks are being held with a view to reaching a permanent ceasefire.

Saudi Arabia started military attacks against Yemen in late March to supposedly undermine Ansarullah and bring the fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a Riyadh ally, back to power.

More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others injured since March. The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools and factories.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Yemen has documented over 100 attacks on Yemeni hospitals since March, warning that hospitals and healthcare facilities are no longer safe places for people.

The UK-based Amnesty International slammed Saudi Arabia’s deliberate strikes on schools in Yemen as war crimes, calling for the prosecution of those involved in the attacks.

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