At least six civilians have been killed when Saudi military aircraft carried out airstrikes against a residential area in Yemen’s strategic western province of Hudaydah as the Riyadh regime presses ahead with its atrocious bombardment campaign against its southern neighbor.
Saudi fighter jets conducted aerial assaults against al-Jabaliyah area in al-Tuhayat district on Thursday afternoon, an unnamed local source told Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network.
The source added that the airstrikes claimed the lives of a father and his five children.
Earlier in the day, Yemeni army soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees targeted the positions of Saudi-backed militiamen loyal to Yemen's former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in the al-Matun district of the northern Yemeni province of al-Jawf, killing and injuring tens of them.
Army soldiers and their allies also managed to take control of a number of areas in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border region of Jizan, where Saudi mercenaries had been stationed.
An unnamed Yemeni military source said a domestically-manufactured Zelzal-1 (Earthquake-1) ballistic missile was also fired at the mercenaries, which left more than 20 of them, including commanders, dead.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of Hadi back to power and crushing the country’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.
According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis.
The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has already said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
A number of Western countries, the US and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.