Yemeni army soldiers fired a Qaher-1 (Conqueror-1) ballistic missile at an oil facility run by the state-owned Aramco petroleum and natural gas company in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border province of Jizan. The Saudi military said it had intercepted a projectile.
Saudi warplanes attacked the al-Safra district of Yemen’s Sa’ada province on Tuesday morning, killing five people and injuring scores of others, the Arabic-language al-Masirah satellite television reported.
The television said Saudi military aircraft dropped cluster bombs on villages and residential areas elsewhere in the province, leaving scores of people dead or injured.
Seven people also died and a number of others were injured when Saudi warplanes bombarded Mount al-Dhin region of Yemen’s northwestern province of Amran.
Moreover, four civilians were injured after Saudi warplanes struck a number of areas in the western Yemeni province of al-Hudaydah. Two of the injured are reportedly in critical condition.
Yemenis gather around a crater reportedly caused by a Saudi-led airstrike targeting the outskirts of the capital Sanaa on December 29, 2015.
Separately, Saudi jets pounded the Saqin district of the northwestern Yemeni province of Sa’ada, leaving a couple dead and three women injured.
Yemen has been under military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March. The Saudi military strikes were launched to supposedly undermine the Ansarullah movement and bring Yemen’s fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Manur Hadi back to power.
More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others injured since March. The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.
Saudi Arabia says the increase in the kingdom’s military spending in 2015 was almost entirely due to its aggression against Yemen as Riyadh struggles with a rising annual budget deficit.
Economy Minister Adel Fakeih said Monday that Saudi Arabia’s expenditure in 2015 increased by 13 percent to hit 975 billion riyals (USD 260 billion), adding that about 20 billion riyals (USD 5.3 billion) of that figure was in military and security, which he attributed to the war on Yemen; Press TV reported.
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