Fighters of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and allied army units have carried out an attack on military positions in the south of Saudi Arabia, killing two high-ranking Saudi officers.
Houthis said in a Wednesday report on their website that the two officers were killed in an ambush by Yemeni forces in al-Hathirah region of Jizan province.
The report said the vehicle carrying the two officers, one of them a colonel and the other a lieutenant, was targeted by a rocket attack by the Yemeni forces.
Al-Masirah News, a website advocating the Houthis, confirmed that one of the slain Saudi military officials was identified as Abdullah Bin Sheiban Hassan Hamdi. An image of the officer’s identity card was also published in the report.
For nearly two years, Yemenis have carried out attacks against Saudi military positions to compensate the kingdom’s relentless bombardment of residential areas across Yemen. The Saudi campaign, which is meant to reinstall ousted President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, has claimed the lives of more than 11,400 people, most of them civilians.
Earlier reports by al-Masirah had said at least 20 Saudi soldiers and officers had been killed in retaliatory attacks by Yemenis since the start of 2017. Estimates show that hundreds more, including servicemen from Arab states of the Persian Gulf region, have been killed since the start of the Saudi aggression in March 2015.
Yemenis said on Wednesday that they had managed to shoot down a Saudi reconnaissance drone flying over the city of Baqim in the province of Sa'ada in northern Yemen. There were no immediate details available.