News / Yemen

Yemeni forces hit gathering of Saudi-led mercenaries in Asir with missiles

Sunday, 05 January 2020 7:02 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 05 January 2020 7:08 PM ]

This undated photo, provided by the media bureau of Yemen’s Operations Command, shows a Yemeni missile shortly after launch.

Yemeni forces have targeted a gathering of Saudi mercenaries in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern province of Asir with domestically-manufactured missiles in retaliation for airstrikes by the kingdom, a Yemeni military source says.

Citing an unnamed military source, the media bureau of Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement reported that Yemeni missile defense units successfully targetted a gathering of Saudi mercenaries in the Majazeh district with three Zelzal-1 (Earthquake-1) missiles earlier in the day.

The report said the missiles successfully hit their designated target and killed or wounded an unspecified number of Saudi-led mercenaries.

Back in September, Yemeni combat drones struck Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais, cutting the kingdom's output by 5.7 million barrels a day. The attacks also led to a halt in about 50 percent of the kingdom’s crude and gas production, causing a record surge in oil prices.

Yemeni forces regularly target positions inside Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the Saudi-led 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.

Yemeni forces shoot down another Saudi-led reconnaissance drone in Jizan

Shooting down the drones is commonplace now in the region.

The retaliatory missile attack on Sunday came four days after the Yemeni army intercepted and targeted a reconnaissance drone belonging to the Saudi-led military coalition while it was flying over the kingdom’s southern border region of Jizan.

The war has claimed more than 100,000 lives so far. That is according to estimates by the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization.

The imposed war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The United Nations says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.

Nearly five years in, the coalition objectives have not been fulfilled.

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