Yemeni army ballistic missile pounds target inside Saudi Arabia: Report
YemenExtra
Y.A
The Yemeni army, backed by Houthi Ansarullah fighters, has fired a medium-range ballistic missile at a Saudi military target inside the Arab kingdom, the second such missile attack this month after Yemenis threatened to retaliate over a crippling blockade the so-called Saudi-led military coalition has imposed on the impoverished nation.
An unnamed military source told Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network on Thursday night that the “domestically-built” missile had precisely hit the target earlier in the day, without specifying the exact location of the Saudi target.
There were no immediate reports on possible casualties among the Saudi troops and the extent of damage inflicted on their military hardware.
The Saudi Press Agency, however, reported that the country’s military had managed to intercept a ballistic missile from Yemen over the southern city of Khamis Mushait in Asir province.
“The missile was destroyed without any casualties,” the agency quoted Turki al-Maliki, the Saudi-led coalition’s spokesman, as saying late on Thursday.
On November 5, Yemeni forces launched a solid propellant and Scud-type Borkan-2 (Volcano-2) missile against King Khalid International Airport, located 35 kilometers north of the Saudi capital Riyadh, in retaliation for Saudi’s devastating aerial bombardment campaign against Yemen.
The Saudi authorities, however, said at the time that the kingdom’s army had managed to intercept the missile, the fragments of which landed on the airport campus without inflicting any significant damage. Riyadh further said that the long-range missile had been fired by Houthi fighters, who are on the forefront of fighting against the Saudi war machine.
Following the missile launch, Saudi Arabia imposed a tight blockade on nearly all Yemen’s air, land and sea ports, exerting further pressure on Yemeni people, who receive desperately needed humanitarian assistance through the western port city of Hudaydah and an international airport in the capital Sana’a, both under the crippling siege.
Since March 2015, the Saudi regime has been heavily bombarding Yemen as part of a brutal campaign against its impoverished southern neighbor in an attempt to reinstall Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, Yemen’s former president and a staunch ally of Riyadh, and to crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement, which is in control of large parts of Yemen, including the capital. The Saudi campaign, however, has failed to achieve its goals.
Over the past two years, the Houthis have been running state affairs and defending Yemeni people against the Saudi aggression.
Latest figures show that the war has so far killed over 12,000 Yemenis and wounded thousands more. The Saudi aggression has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.
Certain Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, are key partners to the campaign, which lacks any international mandate and has faced increasing criticism.