News / Yemen

Yemeni troops kill 7 Saudi soldiers in Najran, Jizan, pound Saudi bases

Sunday, 05 February 2017 4:34 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 05 February 2017 5:14 PM ]

This photo, provided by the media bureau of the operations command in Yemen, shows a Saudi military base in the kingdom’s southwestern region of Najran being hit by an artillery shell fired by Yemeni forces on February 5, 2017.

Yemeni army soldiers, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, have killed at least seven Saudi troops in the kingdom’s southwestern border regions of Najran and Jizan as the Riyadh regime pushes ahead with its campaign against Yemen.

According to a report by Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, the Yemeni forces on Sunday gunned down two Saudi troops in a sniper attack on al-Tala'a military base in Najran, and killed three more by attacking al-Makhroq base with rocket-propelled grenades in the same region.

The Yemeni troops also launched a heavy artillery attack against a number of Saudi military bases in the region, including al-Sadis and al-Shabakeh. They also bombarded the Rejla Camp with artillery shells.

The Yemeni forces also launched an attack against al-Qais military base in Jizan, killing two more Saudi soldiers. They managed to destroy three Saudi military vehicles in the vicinity of al-Fariza and another near al-Jamayel base in the same region.

The Yemeni fighters also managed to destroy two military vehicles and an armored vehicle, belonging to the Saudi-led coalition, in the western coastal line of Yemen’s southwestern province of Ta’izz, near the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah fighters and their allies in the army have been launching retaliatory attacks against parts of the Saudi territory adjacent to northern Yemen, as well as the gatherings of Riyadh-allied militants inside Yemen.

Armed tribesmen, loyal to the Houthi Ansarullah movement, attend a gathering in the capital, Sana’a, Yemen, on January 1, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

A report by Reuters published in April last year showed that at least 400 Saudi soldiers had been killed in the cross-border fire since the start of the campaign in March 2015. Riyadh has maintained a policy of ambiguity regarding its casualties in the war on Yemen. Senior military officials have said that they would not release such information until after the campaign.

Saudi Arabia has been engaged in the deadly campaign since March 2015 in an attempt to bring back Yemen’s former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, to power and undermine Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The Saudi war has so far claimed the lives of at least 11,400 Yemenis, and taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

Yemeni children pose for a photo in a camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of the southern city of Ta'izz, Yemen, January 11, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said recently that Saudi military aggression against Yemen had killed nearly 1,400 Yemeni kids, injuring hundreds more.

Rights groups have described the United States and the United Kingdom as complicit in the bloodletting given their provision of deadly weapons to the Saudi regime during the campaign.

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