SANA’A (Dispatches) – An
airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition has mistakenly hit a camp of allied forces, killing at least 12 militants, Yemeni military officials said Friday.
The strike, which took place on Thursday in the province of Shabwa, also wounded at least eight Yemeni troops, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
There was no immediate comment from the Saudi-led coalition. Turki al-Maliki, a coalition spokesman, did not respond to numerous calls and messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.
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 president Abd Rabbuh Mansur 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.
Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s incessant bombardment of the impoverished country, the Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.
Yemeni Foreign Minister in the National Salvation Government Hisham Sharaf Abdullah has called upon the UN Security Council to hold Saudi Arabia and its arms suppliers to account in accordance with the international law over their war crimes in the crisis-stricken Arab country.
Abdullah, in identical letters addressed to the rotating president of the Security Council Abdou Abarry and members of the UN body, asked them to expose the groundless nature of allegations at the center of the Saudi letter to the Council on December 28.
Earlier, in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the president of the Security Council, the permanent representative of Saudi Arabia to the UN, Abdallah al-Mouallimi, had asked the world body to hold Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement accountable for their retaliatory attacks on Saudi targets, claiming that those attacks endangered peace.
In reaction, the Yemeni foreign minister urged the Security Council to assume its responsibilities with regards to international peace and security, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf region, and to take measures that would stop Saudi Arabia’s constant threats and indiscriminate bombardment of civilian facilities, and protect the Yemeni nation against terrorism and crimes being perpetrated by the Riyadh regime and its allies.