Yemeni armed forces have reportedly fired a domestically-designed and -developed ballistic missile at a military target in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border region of Jizan, in retaliation for strikes by a Saudi-led military coalition waging war on Yemen.
Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, citing an unnamed military official from the missile unit of the Yemeni army, reported that a gathering of Saudi-led forces in Tabba Reshash area near the mountainous region of al-Doud had been targeted with a short-range Zelzal-1 (Earthquake-1) missile late on Friday, without giving the number of potential casualties of the strike.
Yemeni army also hit two other gatherings of Saudi-led mercenaries in the east of al-Doud and in the Majaza border area of the southwestern province of Asir in early Thursday and late Wednesday, respectively, with the same type of missile.
They also managed to strike a group of Saudi-led military hardware and equipment in the Midi Desert in Yemen’s northwestern Hajjah Province with Zelzal-1 missile earlier on Wednesday, inflicting damage.
Meanwhile, al-Masirah reported that at least two Yemeni civilians lost their lives and three others wounded after an airstrike carried out by Saudi-led warplanes hit a vehicle in the city of Abs in Hajjah.
Furthermore, a Yemeni citizen was killed and a number of others sustained injuries after Saudi-led fighter jets conducted an airstrike on Munirah city in the western province of Hudaydah.
Saudi Arabia and some of its allies, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan, launched a brutal war against Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush the country’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has played a significant role, alongside the Yemeni army, in defending the impoverished nation against the Saudi war machine.
The aggression initially consisted of a bombing campaign but was later coupled with a naval blockade and the deployment of ground forces to Yemen. Some 15,000 Yemenis have so far been killed and thousands more injured.
More than 2,200 others have also died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.
A number of Western countries, the United States and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.