SANA’A (Dispatches) – Yemeni army troops, backed by allied fighters from Popular Committees, have taken full control of a strategic area in the country’s northern province of Hajjah close to the border with Saudi Arabia.
Military sources, requesting anonymity, told Yemen News Portal website that Yemeni soldiers and allied fighters established control over al-Hathera area in the Harad district on Thursday, after they exchanged heavy gunfire with Saudi-paid militants.
The sources said Yemeni army troops and Popular Committees fighters also captured a military camp in the area, which housed Saudi mercenaries of Sudanese origin.
The development came a day after Yemeni forces fired ballistic missiles at a military base of the Saudi-led coalition in Hajjah province, killing 10 Sudanese mercenaries.
“The missiles struck the units of Sudanese troops, who are part of the Saudi-led coalition, in Hajjah province near the border with Saudi Arabia,” a local military source said on condition of anonymity.
“A total of 10 Sudanese soldiers were killed and more than 25 others injured in Hajjah’s district of Midi.”
In another development, a spokesman for the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC) said the Arab country is experiencing the toughest petroleum products crisis since the start of the Saudi aggression and siege nearly seven year ago.
The queues of cars waiting for fuel are “stretching more than three kilometers in front of [petrol] stations in various provinces” across the country, Essam al-Mutawakel told Yemen’s al-Masirah television network on Wednesday.
He noted that the crisis could be resolved, if fuel ships were not blocked from entering Yemen via Hudaydah port.
Despite having undergone inspection and received UN clearance, the Yemen-bound fuel ships are being seized by the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen and are transferred to Saudi Arabia’s Jizan port, al-Mutawakel explained.
Earlier in the day, the YPC said the Saudi-led coalition banned a fuel ship, which had received UN clearance, from entering Hudaydah port.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies -- including the United Arab Emirates -- launched a brutal war against Yemen in March 2015.
The war was launched to eliminate Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.
The war, accompanied by a tight siege, has failed to reach its goals, but it has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people.