Dozens of Saudi mercenaries killed as Yemeni forces hit base in Ta’izz

Dozens of Saudi-sponsored militiamen loyal to Yemen's resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, have been killed and scores of others sustained injuries when Yemeni army forces fired a domestically-manufactured ballistic missile at their base in the country’s southwestern province of Ta’izz.

A Yemeni military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network that Yemeni soldiers and their allies launched a Qaher 2-M (Subduer 2-M) missile at al-Khayami base on Monday afternoon.

The source added that the attack left more than 35 Hadi loyalists dead and over 20 others injured.

However, medical officials close to Hadi, whose forces control the southwestern province of Aden, claimed that only 12 people were killed in the attack.

They added that the missile attack took place during a military parade and one of its main targets was Hadi’s deputy interior minister, who was present at the parade.

A cameraman for the Yemeni Balqis television network was among those killed in the incident.

Yemeni army troops and Popular Committees' fighters also launched a volley of Katyusha rockets and artillery rounds at a gathering of Saudi mercenaries north of the coastal fishing village of Yakhtul in the same Yemeni province.

Later in the day, Saudi fighter jets carried out an airstrike on a residential building in the al-Azqoul area of Sahar district in the northwestern Yemeni province of Sa’ada, killing all three members of a family.

Saudi warplanes also bombarded the building of the national television station Yemen TV in the Ath'thaorah district of Sana’a Province.

The aerial attack badly damaged the network’s building. There were however no immediate reports of casualties.

At least 13,600 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen in 2015. Much of the 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 2017 and is suspected to have infected 841,906.

In November 2017, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said 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 were food insecure in the country.

The world body says that 6.8 million, meaning almost one in four people, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.

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