According to reports on Thursday, the Yemeni forces targeted the Saudi troops in Jizan, north of Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen, in retaliation for Riyadh’s ongoing military campaign against its impoverished neighbor.
There is still no word on possible casualties from the attack.
The incident came a day after a Saudi soldier was killed in retaliatory rocket attacks carried out by the Yemeni army and the Ansarullah fighters of the Houthi movement. Also on Wednesday, the Yemeni army targeted Saudi security bases in Dhahran al-Janub in Asir Province with several Katyusha rockets.
Earlier in the day, Saudi warplanes pounded the presidential palace and nearby buildings in the southwestern Yemeni province of Ta’izz.
The northwestern provinces of Hajjah and Sa’ada were also struck by Saudi aerial assaults.
Meanwhile, a US website quoted an unnamed source in the Pentagon as saying that the Saudi regime has employed cluster bombs in its military aggression against the Yemeni people.
“The US is aware that Saudi Arabia has used cluster munitions in Yemen,” US News quoted the source as saying.
An American commentator also lashed out at Washington for turning a blind eye to Riyadh’s employment of unconventional weapons in Yemen.
The US statesmen “want to reassure the Saudis that the US is still on their side, so they’re letting them do whatever they want,” said Charles Schmitz, a Towson University professor and expert on Yemen.
Saudi Arabia launched its aggression against Yemen on March 26 – without a UN mandate – in an effort to undermine Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the country’s fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.
The United Nations says the conflict in Yemen has killed more than 4,000 people, nearly half of them civilians, since late March. Local Yemeni sources, however, say the fatality figure is much higher.