Dubai: At least 70 Yemeni soldiers have been killed in missile and drone attacks blamed on ‘Huthi’ rebels, on a mosque in the central province of Marib, medical and military sources said Sunday.
Saturday’s strike follows months of relative calm in the war between the Iran-backed ‘Huthis’ and Yemen’s internationally recognized government which is backed by a Saudi-led military coalition.
The Huthis attacked a mosque in a military camp in Marib – about 170 kilometres east of the capital Sanaa – during evening prayers, military sources told this agency.
A medical source at a Marib city hospital, where the casualties were transported, said that at least 70 soldiers were killed and more than 50 injured in the strike.
The attack came a day after coalition-backed government forces launched a large-scale operation against the ‘Huthis’ in the Naham region, north of Sanaa. Fighting in Naham was ongoing Sunday, a military source said according to the official ‘Saba’ news agency. “Dozens from the (Huthi) militia were killed and injured,” said a source.
Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi condemned the ‘cowardly and terrorist’ attack on the mosque.
“The disgraceful actions of the Huthi militia without a doubt confirm its unwillingness to (achieve) peace, because it knows nothing but death and destruction and are a cheap Iranian tool in the region, ‘Saba’ quoted Hadi as saying.
The ‘Huthis’ did not make any immediate claim of responsibility and the ‘Saba’ report did not give a death toll.
The uptick in violence comes shortly after United Nations envoy Martin Griffiths welcomed a sharp reduction in air strikes and the movement of ground forces.
“We are surely, and I hope this is true and I hope it will remain so, witnessing one of the quietest periods of this conflict,” Griffiths had said in a briefing Thursday to the UN Security Council (UNSC).
A year after Yemen’s warring sides agreed to a UN-brokered truce for the key Red Sea port city of Hodeida and its surroundings, fighting in the province has subsided but the slow implementation of the deal has quashed hopes for an end to the conflict.
AFP