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Yemeni forces shoot down Saudi-led reconnaissance drone over Sa'ada

This file picture shows the wreckage of a reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle shot down by Yemeni forces in an unidentified location in Yemen. (Photo by the media bureau of the Yemen Operations Command Center)

The Yemeni army has shot down a Saudi unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as it was on a reconnaissance mission in Yemen’s northern province of Sa'ada.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah satellite television network, citing a military source, reported that the drone was shot down on Tuesday as it was flying in the skies of al-Hisama neighborhood of the city of Dhahir west of the province.

Backed by allied fighters from Popular Committees and those of the Houthi Ansarullah movement, the Yemeni army also managed to shoot down two such drones last week, one over Yemen’s western coastal province of Hudaydah and the other over Saudi Arabia’s southwestern region of Jizan.

Separately on Tuesday, Yemeni troops managed to kill more than 30 Saudi-led mercenaries and wound dozens more in the Midi Desert in Yemen's northwestern Hajjah province. They also destroyed as many as 11 military vehicles of the invaders.

Elsewhere in Hudaydah province, Yemeni forces killed some 25 Saudi-led Sudanese mercenaries in the vicinity of Hudaydah city.

Leading a coalition of its allies, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan, Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall a former Riyadh-friendly regime, which had resigned amid popular discontent, and to crush the country’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has played a significant role, alongside the Yemeni army, in defending the nation and has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government.

The aggression initially consisted of a bombing campaign, but was later coupled with a naval blockade and the deployment of ground forces to Yemen. According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis.

The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has already said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.

More than three and a half years into that war, Saudi Arabia has achieved neither of its objectives. This is while it had declared at the start of the invasion that the war would take no more than a couple of weeks.


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