Yemeni army troops and fighters from the allied Popular Committees have been engaged in fierce clashes with Saudi mercenaries in the country’s northwestern province of Hajjah, inflicting heavy losses on them and killing a senior commander.
Informed sources, requesting anonymity, told Yemen’s official Saba news agency that Brigadier General Haikal al-Samini, commander of a military unit in the so-called Fifth Military Zone of the Saudi-led coalition, was killed on Friday after the Yemeni army troops and their allies targeted Saudi-sponsored militants in the Harad district.
According to Yemeni media outlets, at least 53 senior Saudi-backed militant commanders have been killed over the past few months in the course of clashes in Yemen’s central oil-producing province of Ma’rib.
Last month, Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network reported that the commander of the so-called Third Brigade, Majdi al-Radfani, had died of his injuries after Yemeni army troops and their allies targeted UAE-sponsored militants in the Bayhan district of the southern Yemeni province of Shabwah.
The report added that more than 130 militants have been killed during battles with Yemeni Armed Forces over the past few days and dozens of others have been wounded. A number of their military vehicles have been destroyed as well.
Moreover, Saudi warplanes have launched a new round of airstrikes across Yemen, as the Riyadh regime escalates its aggression against its conflict-plagued southern neighbor.
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Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported more than a dozen air attacks on the country’s northern province of Hajjah on Friday evening, saying the Saudi jets repeatedly bombarded different sites in the Harad and Abs districts of the province.
Saudi fighter jets also carried out seven airstrikes on the al-Jubah and Wadi Ubaidah districts of Ma’rib province, according to the television network.
Separately, four airstrikes were carried out on the al-Hazm and Khabb was ash Sha’af districts of Yemen’s northern province of al-Jawf.
Saudi shelling kills two civilians in Yemen’s Sa’ada
Additionally, two civilians were killed after Saudi forces fired mortar shells at residential areas in Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada.
Local sources told al-Masirah TV that a civilian was killed in the Qatabir district, and another in the border Shada’a district.
An African refugee also lost his life when Saudi border guards fired shots at the Raqou area in the Monabbih district of the province. Seven other civilians, including four African refugees, were injured in the shooting.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, backed by the United States and European powers, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing Ansarullah resistance movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
Despite Saudi Arabia’s incessant bombardment of the impoverished country, the Yemeni armed forces have gradually grown stronger, leaving Riyadh and its allies, most notably the United Arab Emirates, bogged down in the country.
