Yemeni artillery fire kills 3 pro-Saudi commanders

Yemeni forces have fired a barrage of artillery rounds at Saudi positions in the impoverished country, killing three top commanders, in retaliation for Riyadh’s deadly onslaught against the Arabian Peninsula country.

Yemeni army troops, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, launched the attack against the Saudi troops deployed in the Sirwah district of the western province of Ma'rib on Friday, killing three high-ranking commanders, identified as General Abdulrab al-Shadadi, Shayef Ameri, and Ali Hamisi, Yemen's al-Masirah television reported.

The report added that dozens of Saudi officers and soldiers were also slain in the attack.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s Ansarullah fighters, backed by allied army units, launched a surface-to-surface ballistic missile against al-Faisal military base in the vicinity of Khamis Mushait city in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern Asir province.

According to the al-Masirah report, the locally developed Qaher 1 missile successfully struck the base and inflicted heavy damage to its structure, but there were no reports of possible casualties.

On Monday, Yemeni forces targeted al-Montazah military base in the Zahran district of Asir with another missile.

The Yemeni forces have been staging recurrent retaliatory attacks against Saudi Arabia, which has been waging a war on the country since March 2015. The Saudi aggression, which has killed more than 10,000 in Yemen, was launched in an unsuccessful attempt to restore power to Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a Saudi ally who has resigned as Yemen’s president but seeks to forcefully return to power.

The Saudi strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

The Saudi onslaught has also triggered a cholera outbreak, which according to a Friday UNICEF report, has added to “the misery of millions of children in Yemen.”

The Houthi Ansarullah fighters took state matters into their own hands in the wake of Hadi's resignation and escape, which threw Yemen into a state of uncertainty and threatened a total security breakdown in the country, where an al-Qaeda affiliate is present.

In a separate development, United Nations envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said on Friday that a 72-hour renewable truce deal would be announced in the coming days. The UN envoy expressed hope that a new peace plan for Yemen would be drafted in the next two weeks following his talks with Ansarullah representatives in Oman.

Three months of peace talks in Kuwait earlier this year ended without a breakthrough.

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