Yemen Attacks Saudi Arabia’s Abha Airport With Drones

Date: 13 August 2019 - 21:57

News ID: ۶۹۲۷۹

SANAA (Dispatches) – Yemeni armed forces have targeted the airport of Abha, in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern province of Asir, with domestically-developed Qasef-2K (Striker-2K) drones.
A military source told Yemen’s al-Masirah TV that the drone attacks hit its targets with precision on Tuesday.
Yemeni forces regularly target positions inside Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the Saudi-led military aggression on their country.
On Sunday, the Yemeni forces launched a drone attack on King Khalid Air Base near the city of Khamis Mushait in Asir.
In another development, some 2,000 militants backed by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have defected to Sanaa after dozens of the Saudi-led coalition positions collapsed in Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia in the past two weeks, Spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Saree announced on Tuesday.
Thousands of defectors are in a rush for receiving amnesty from Sanaa, to such an extent that the return of the Saudi-backed militants to the Yemeni capital for joining the Yemeni Army and the Ansarullah Popular Forces has been a common scene in the capital, al-Akhbar, a Lebanese newspaper, reported.
The report said that the recent successes achieved by the Yemeni army and Ansarullah popular forces in capturing 37 military sites in the Saudi border region of Najran and al-Jawf have shattered the morale among militants serving the Saudi-Emirati coalition.
Militants' morale went down on both sides of the coalition, it said, adding that those loyal to Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in Marib and al-Bayda along with the UAE-backed militants on the Western coast are frustrated with the recent developments.
The Lebanese paper added that the defense ministry of the National Salvation Government has formed an operational committee tasked with welcoming and coordinating the affairs related to defectors to ease their union with the Yemeni army and Ansarullah popular forces.
Sanaa has welcomed tens of commanders who have abandoned the Saudi-Emirati coalition from fronts in Southern Saudi Arabia - Asir, Najran and Jazan provinces - and from Yemen's Western coasts - Taez, al-Beyda and Marib provinces.
Defectors have told officials in Sanaa that Saudi commanders have been using Yemeni militants as a human shield, and that in some cases hundreds of Yemeni militants have been "mistakenly” attacked by Saudi forces.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its allies launched a brutal war against Yemen in March 2015.
The U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the Saudi-led war has claimed the lives of over 60,000 Yemenis since January 2016.
The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The United Nations says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.
The war was launched to eliminate Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore a former regime to power in Yemen. It has achieved neither of its goals.