SANA’A (Dispatches) – Militants loyal to former Yemeni regime and backed by the United Arab Emirates have withdrawn from the strategic port city of Hudaydah, allowing the Yemeni Army and popular forces retake their positions, Yemeni officials and the UN said.
The mercenaries and militants said late Friday they redeployed troops from Hudaydah because they could not stay in the city amid a UN-brokered cease-fire deal.
They criticized the former regime for not allowing them to retake control of the city from the popular forces.
In another development in Hudaydah, at least four Yemeni civilians, including three children, were killed in new airstrikes by Saudi-led coalition forces in the war-ravaged country on Friday.
Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported the attacks on Friday. Saudi warplanes hit the Tuhayta district in Hudaydah. Two people were also reportedly wounded in the bombardment.
On Thursday, Saudi missiles and artillery shells targeted the northwestern Yemeni province of Sa’adah, leaving one civilian dead and two others injured.
Meanwhile, Yemeni forces intercepted and shot down another U.S.-built Boeing Insitu ScanEagle spy drone belonging to the invading Saudi-led alliance amid the Saudi intensified spying flights over Yemen’s oil-producing province of Ma’rib,
Spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a post published on his Twitter page on Saturday that Yemeni air defense units used a “suitable” domestically-developed surface-to-air missile to shoot down the American unmanned aerial vehicle as it was carrying out hostile acts over the al-Jubah district.
He said further details about the operation and its footage will be released soon.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi’s government back to power and crushing popular Ansarullah. 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.