News / Saudi Arabia

Yemenis' retaliatory attacks leave four Saudi soldiers dead

Sunday, 31 December 2017 3:50 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 31 December 2017 4:12 PM ]

Members of the Saudi border guard are stationed at a lookout point on the Saudi-Yemeni border, in southwestern Saudi Arabia, on April 9, 2015. (Photo by AFP)

At least four Saudi soldiers have been killed after Yemeni forces launched a string of attacks against their military bases in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border region of Najran in retaliation for the Riyadh regime’s aerial bombardment campaign.

An unnamed military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language al-Masirah television network that Yemeni forces and their allies fatally shot the troopers in the al-Moannaq and al-Kars military bases in addition to al-Hamezah village.

The development came hours after four civilians lost their lives when Saudi fighter jets struck a car in a district of Yemen’s western province of Amran.

At least 13,600 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen in 2015. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

The Saudi-led war has also triggered a deadly cholera epidemic across Yemen.

According to the World Health Organization’s latest count, the cholera outbreak has killed 2,167 people since the end of April and is suspected to have infected 841,906.

Boys walk on the wreckage of a building hit by Saudi airstrikes two years ago in Sana’a, Yemen, on December 30, 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

On November 26, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said that more than 11 million children in Yemen were in acute need of aid, stressing that it was estimated that every 10 minutes a child died of a preventable disease there.

Additionally, the UN has described the current level of hunger in Yemen as “unprecedented,” emphasizing that 17 million people are now food insecure in the country. It added that 6.8 million, almost one in four Yemenis, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.

A recent survey showed that almost one-third of Yemeni families had gaps in their diets and hardly ever consumed foods like pulses, vegetables, fruit, dairy products or meat.

More than three million pregnant and nursing women and children under the age of five also need support to prevent or cure malnutrition.

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