New Yemeni missile system used to target Saudi-led warplanes: Report

A new report has revealed that Yemeni air force and air defense units used a new domestically-designed and-produced missile system to shield residential areas in the country’s capital and the northwestern provinces of Sana’a and Sa’ada against airstrikes by Saudi military aircraft.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported that Yemeni air defense forces, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, employed the system to intercept and target a twin-engine, all-weather tactical F-15 fighter jet belonging to the Royal Saudi Air Force in the skies over Sana’a early on January 8.

The development came only hours after Yemeni air defense forces used another battery of the same missile defense system to shoot down a twin-engine and multirole Panavia Tornado combat aircraft as it was flying in the skies over Kitaf wa al-Boqe'e district in Sa’ada 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.

Nearly dozen civilians killed as Saudi jets hit outdoor market

Meanwhile, nearly a dozen civilians have lost their lives when Saudi fighter jets carried out an airstrike in Yemen’s Sa’ada province.

Local source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military aircraft bombarded a popular outdoor market in the Kitaf wa al-Boqe'e district of the province on Wednesday evening, leaving 10 people killed and one person injured.

The Saudi-led war has also triggered deadly epidemics of infectious diseases, especially diphtheria and cholera, across Yemen.

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

WHO has also warned that at least 471 people in Yemen have contracted diphtheria, a bacterial disease that has been killing one in 10 Yemenis since the outbreak started in the war-torn country in mid-August last year.

The UN agency’s spokesman, Tarik Jasarevic, made the disturbing announcement last Thursday, adding that the west-central province of Ibb and the western province of Hudaydah were the hardest hit by diphtheria, which is easily spread between people through direct physical contact or the air.

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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