Yemeni army soldiers, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, have shot dead a Saudi trooper in the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Jizan in response to Riyadh’s deadly airstrikes against their conflict-stricken country.
Yemeni forces and their allies targeted the Saudi soldier in the al-Moannaq military camp of the region, located 969 kilometers south of the capital, Riyadh, on Sunday afternoon, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.
Army troops and Popular Committees fighters also launched a number of artillery shells at al-Beit al-Abyaz military base in the same Saudi region, though no immediate report of casualties was available.
Moreover, Yemeni soldiers and allied fighters fired a domestically-manufactured Zelzal-2 (Earthquake-2) missile at a camp belonging to Saudi-backed militiamen loyal to resigned Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Saudi soldiers in the Alab border crossing of Saudi Arabia's southwestern region of Asir.
Separately, Saudi warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes against al-Khawkhah district of Yemen’s western coastal province of Hudaydah, with no immediate word on possible casualties.
Saudi jets also bombarded the Maqbanah district of the southwestern Yemeni province of Ta’izz.
According to the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, the Saudi military campaign has claimed the lives of 10,000 Yemenis and left 40,000 others wounded.
McGoldrick told reporters in Sana’a earlier this year that the figure was based on casualty counts given by health facilities and that the actual number might be higher.
On February 23, Yemen’s Legal Center for Rights and Development, an independent monitoring group, put the civilian death toll in the war-torn Arab country at 12,041.
The fatalities, it said, comprise 2,568 children and 1,870 women.
