Yemeni forces have targeted gathering of mercenaries fighting for the Riyadh regime in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern province of Asir with a domestically-manufactured missile.
Citing an unnamed military source, Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah news website reported that Yemeni missile defense units successfully hit one gathering of Saudi mercenaries near the Alab crossing with a Zelzal-1 (Earthquake-1) missile on Monday.
The strike followed another attack by Yemeni troops on the same area on Sunday, al-Masirah said, adding that Yemeni missile defense units have dealt blows to the mercenaries and their positions near the crossing with at least seven Zelzal-1 missiles over the past two days.
In a separate report on Monday, al-Masirah, citing an unnamed military source, said Yemeni forces targeted another gathering of the same sort in Mas camp in Yemen's central province of Ma'rib with a volley of rockets.
It added that Yemeni snipers also managed to shoot dead at least nine mercenaries in Yemen’s northwestern province of Hajjah earlier in the day.
On Saturday, Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah fighters conducted drone strikes on Saudi Arabia’s two oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais, reducing output of mainly light crude grades by 5.7 million barrels. The attacks led to a halt in about 50 percent of the Arab kingdom’s crude and gas production, causing a record surge in oil prices.
Earlier on Monday, the spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, General Yahya Sare'a, said in a statement that the Yemeni army and its allied forces “assure the Saudi regime that our long hand can reach any place we want at any time we choose.”
Yemeni forces regularly target positions inside Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the Saudi war, which began in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall the country's Riyadh-allied former regime and crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The Western-backed military aggression, coupled with a naval blockade, has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis, destroyed the country’s infrastructure and led to a massive humanitarian crisis.