A senior ringleader of a Takfiri terrorist group involved in the assassination of the Yemeni minister of sports and youth affairs in the National Salvation Government has been killed in the country’s southwestern province of Dhamar.
The media bureau of the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, citing a statement released by the Yemeni Ministry of Interior, announced on Saturday that Muhammad Ali Ahmed Hanash was killed during a heavy exchange of gunfire with security forces in Horour area of Mayfa’at Anss district.
The development took place only a few days after Yemeni security forces shot and killed two terrorists, identified as Ibrahim Saleh Abdullah al-Jabba and Yasser Ahmed Saad Jaber, during an anti-terrorism operation and in relation to the targeted killing of Hassan Mohammed Zaid.
Zaid lost his life on October 27, when a group of unknown gunmen blocked his way as he was driving along a road in the capital Sana’a, and sprayed his car with bullets.
The minister was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at Yemen German Hospital.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crush the popular Ansarullah movement.
The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives for over the past five years.
Ansarullah movement, backed by armed forces, has been defending Yemen against the Saudi-led alliance, preventing the aggressors from fulfilling the objectives of the devastating war.