News / Saudi Arabia

Yemeni sharpshooters kill four Saudi troopers in retaliatory attacks

Tuesday, 02 January 2018 7:16 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 02 January 2018 7:22 PM ]

This file photo shows a Yemeni Houthi Ansarullah fighter dressed in camouflage, and aiming at a position of Saudi troops in southwestern Saudi Arabia. (Photo by the media bureau of Yemen’s Joint Operations Command)

Yemeni army soldiers, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, have shot dead four Saudi troopers in the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Jizan, in retaliation for the Riyadh regime’s military campaign against the crisis-hit country.

Yemeni forces shot and killed the soldiers in the mountainous Jebel al-Dukhan area as well as al-Moannaq and al-Kars military bases in the region, located 967 kilometers southwest of the capital Riyadh, on Tuesday evening, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.

Yemeni forces and their allies also launched a salvo of artillery rounds at the gatherings of Saudi soldiers in Ras al-Hobrah area, Mo’tan military base and Ghavi village.

There were, however, no immediate reports on possible casualties and the extent of damage caused.

Earlier in the day, a civilian lost his life when Saudi military aircraft carried out an airstrike against a residential area in the Baqim district of Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa'ada.

Yemeni boys stand on the wreckage of a building hit by Saudi airstrikes two years ago in Sana’a, Yemen, on December 30, 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

Seven other civilians were also killed when Saudi warplanes struck a vehicle as it travelling along a highway in the Monabbih district of the same Yemeni province.

At least 13,600 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen in 2015. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

The Saudi-led war has also triggered a deadly cholera epidemic across Yemen.

According to the World Health Organization’s latest count, the cholera outbreak has killed 2,167 people since the end of April and is suspected to have infected 841,906.

Nahla Arishi (2nd R), a pediatrician, talks to relatives of a boy infected with diphtheria at the al-Sadaqa teaching hospital in the southern port city of Aden, Yemen, on December 18, 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

On November 26, the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) said that more than 11 million children in Yemen were in acute need of aid, stressing that it was estimated that every 10 minutes a child died of a preventable disease there.

Additionally, the UN has described the current level of hunger in Yemen as “unprecedented,” emphasizing that 17 million people are now food insecure in the country.

It added that 6.8 million, meaning almost one in four people, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.

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