Yemeni retaliatory attacks left 45 Saudi soldiers dead in February: Report

A recent report has revealed that Yemeni army soldiers and fighters from allied Popular Committees killed and injured dozens of Saudi soldiers in the kingdom’s southwestern border regions in February as part of their retaliatory raids against the Riyadh regime’s aerial bombardment campaign.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, citing unnamed Yemeni military sources, reported that Yemeni forces and their allies fatally shot 45 troopers in the regions of Jizan, Najran and Asir last month.

Another 19 sustained injuries in retaliatory attacks as well.

The report came only a day after Yemeni army soldiers and Popular Committees fighters shot and killed a Saudi soldier at al-Hajlah military camp in Najran, located about 844 kilometers south of Saudi Arabia’s capital city of Riyadh.

Yemeni forces and their allies also targeted another Saudi trooper on the outskirts of Qamar village in Jizan, located 966 kilometers south of Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.

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

The United Nations says a record 22.2 million people are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.

A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there is a growing risk of famine and cholera there.

“After three years of conflict, conditions in Yemen are catastrophic,” John Ging, UN director of aid operations, told the UN Security Council on February 27.

He added, “People's lives have continued unraveling. Conflict has escalated since November driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes.”

Ging further noted that cholera has infected 1.1 million people in Yemen since last April, and a new outbreak of diphtheria has occurred in the war-ravaged Arab country since 1982.

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