SANAA (Dispatches) – Yemeni forces have hit strategically important targets deep inside the UAE in retaliation for its increased involvement in the Saudi-led war and all-out siege on their country, an Army spokesman said Monday.
Yahya Saree said they used Zulfiqar ballistic missiles to target sensitive facilities in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi which hosted the occupying regime of Israel’s president Isaac Herzog. They also hit important targets in Dubai with drones.
“The UAE will remain unsafe as long as Israeli mercenaries in Abu Dhabi and Dubai continue to launch acts of aggression against our nation and homeland,” Saree told a news conference in Sanaa.
He also renewed his call to foreign workers, international companies as well as Emirati nationals to stay away from military and industrial facilities, stating that the sites are viewed by the Yemeni armed forces as “legitimate targets.”
“We will not stand idly by while our people are suffering from a tight blockade and numerous crimes being perpetrated against them. We will continue to legitimately defend Yemen until the aggression and siege stop,” he added.
Herzog’s trip comes more than a month after Naftali Bennett became the first Zionist prime minister to visit the UAE, which normalized ties with Israel in September 2020 under the so-called Abraham Accords that were brokered by the United States.
Reports Herzog discussed security and bilateral relations with the UAE’s de facto ruler, Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on Sunday.
Last week, Yemeni armed forces hit Al- Dhafra Air Base 32 km south of Abu Dhabi, as well as other sites with several Zulfiqar ballistic missiles. Others targets were hit with drones in Dubai.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, backed by the United

States and European powers, 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 Ansarullah 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.
On Sunday, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it had documented examples of Yemeni families being compelled to eat leaves due to hunger in their war-torn nation.
According to the UN agency, hunger in Yemen is on the rise as a result of the Arab country’s “conflict and economic decline.”
“Families in some of Yemen’s worst-affected areas, such as Hajjah [northwest Yemen], are turning to desperate tactics like eating leaves to live,” the World Food Programme stated in a Twitter post accompanied by a photo of a Yemeni civilian frying leaves.
Due to a lack of funding, the UN humanitarian organization said last month that it will restrict food assistance to war-torn Yemen beginning in January.
According to the World Food Programme, more than 16 million Yemenis, or half of the country’s population, are suffering from acute hunger, with 2.3 million children in danger of malnutrition.