SANAA (Dispatches) – The Yemeni army says its military drones have bombarded a Saudi airport in the kingdom’s southwestern province of Asir for the second time in more than a month, forcing the authorities to suspend all flights to and from the regional airport.
Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, citing an unnamed official in the air defense unit of the army, said on Saturday that Yemeni drones had targeted Abha International Airport with several airstrikes earlier in the day, inflicting damage upon it.
The official further said the Yemeni army would increase such retaliatory attacks against Saudi bases and facilities in the near future.
The report added that in the wake of the airstrikes, Saudi authorities published pictures of the prince of Asir inspecting the damage at the airport.
On April 11, the Yemeni Qasef-1 remote control drones carried out a similar attack on the airport that led to the temporary cancellation of all its flights to Jizan, Jeddah and the capital Riyadh.
Meanwhile, Yemeni troops have released a video showing Saudi forces and Riyadh-led militants being hit by snipers and their military vehicles destroyed in rocket attacks.
The attack took place in Najran’s al-Shabakah area, Iran's Arabic-language Al-Alam news network reported on Saturday.
The Yemeni army also struck Saudi-led forces in Najran’s al-Baqa’a Desert with rockets and artillery shells, and targeted the militants’ positions in Saudi Arabia's Jizan region.
An unspecified number of the militants were killed in the attack, the report said.
A Yemeni military source, meanwhile, told a news conference in the capital Sana’a that Yemeni army and its allies had foiled Saudi Arabia’s "biggest” military attack in the country’s western coastline.
More than 120 Saudi mercenaries were killed and hundreds others injured, he added.
The counterattack started on Thursday and lasted through Friday afternoon.
Also on Saturday, Yemeni artillery fire destroyed a Saudi bulldozer near Alab border crossing in the same province.
In the past couple of months, Yemeni army units, backed by allied fighters from Popular Committees and fighters from the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, have managed to hit different targets, either military or economic targets, in Saudi Arabia with ballistic missiles, rockets or drone attacks.
Saudi Arabia and its allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015 in support of the country’s former Riyadh-friendly government. The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured until then.