RIYADH (Dispatches) –
Yemen’s army warned Saudi Arabia on Saturday that it will respond with strength after the kingdom launched a “large-scale” assault on the impoverished nation.
“We promise the Saudi regime painful operations as long as it continues its aggression and crimes,” said armed forces spokesman Yahya Saree.
He said the Yemeni army had struck important and sensitive sites in the Saudi port city of Jizan with modern precision-guided missiles in retaliation.
The Yemeni army also shot down a U.S.-made Saudi spy drone flying over the northern province of Jawf, the fifth of its kind downed by Yemeni forces since the beginning of the month and the tenth since January.
“Our air defenses were able to shoot down an American-made ScanEagle spy aircraft, with a suitable weapon,” Saree said, adding the downing came as the drone “was carrying out hostile actions yesterday evening, Friday, in the airspace of the al-Yatama area in the Khub and Sha’af district, in al-Jawf province”.
The retaliatory attack followed intensified Saudi airstrikes against Yemen in the past few days.
Saudi Arabia on Saturday launched a “large-scale” assault on Yemen after a projectile fired in retaliation allegedly killed two people in the kingdom, in the first such deaths in three years.
A Saudi airstrike on Yemen killed three people and wounded six others in Ajama, a town northwest of the capital Sanaa, Yemeni medics said.
Yemen has been wracked by a Saudi-led war since 2014, killing tens of thousands of people in what the UN has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Saudi’s civil defense said that two people were killed and seven others wounded in the projectile attack on Jazan, a southern region of the kingdom bordering Yemen.
The Saudi military said shortly afterwards that it was “preparing for a large-scale military operation”.
It carried out later an airstrike in which “three civilians including a child and a woman were killed, and six others were wounded”, the Yemeni medics told AFP.
Yemeni officials condemned Saudi airstrikes on hospitals and medical centers in the capital Sana’a as “war crimes”, calling

on international organizations to intervene and stop them.
Spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Administration and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Talat al-Sharjabi said that the Saudi aerial attacks, which deliberately target medical facilities, constitute war crimes and are meant to increase the suffering of the Yemeni nation.”
“As the Saudi-led coalition intensifies its attacks on Sana’a, we have complained to international institutions about the decrease in delivery of humanitarian aid to poor people and Yemeni hospitals,” he said.
Director General of the Public Health and Population Office in Sana’a Dr. Mutahar al-Marwani said the Saudi airstrikes on hospitals are a deliberate attempt to put pressure on the Yemeni health sector, which is currently suffering from the devastating Saudi war and brutal siege.
He said all medical diagnostic imaging centers are closed down in Sana’a, and thousands of patients have been adversely affected as a result.
On Friday, Saudi warplanes targeted an area close to Al-Alia Medical Center in the Yemeni capital, severely damaging nearby buildings.
A medical source told Yemen’s Al-Masirah television that the strikes had caused panic and fear among patients and medical staff and put the medical center out of service.
Saudi military aircraft also targeted Mahazer area in the Sahar district of Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada, but there were no immediate reports about possible casualties and the extent of damage.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
Earlier this week, the World Food Program said it has been “forced” to cut aid to Yemen due to lack of funds, and warned of a surge in hunger in the country.
“From January, eight million will receive a reduced food ration, while five million at immediate risk of slipping into famine conditions will remain on a full ration,” the UN agency said in a statement, adding that it was “running out of funds”.
“From January, eight million will receive a reduced food ration, while five million at immediate risk of slipping into famine conditions will remain on a full ration,” the UN agency said in a statement, adding that it was “running out of funds”.
The UN estimates Yemen’s war will have claimed 377,000 lives by the end of the year through both direct and indirect impacts.
More than 80 percent of Yemen’s population of about 30 million requires humanitarian assistance in what the UN says is world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Despite Saudi Arabia’s incessant bombardment of the impoverished country, Yemeni armed forces have grown steadily in strength and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.