Houthi missile kills senior Yemeni general

ADEN (Reuters) – The second-in-command of Yemen’s army was killed on Wednesday when a missile fired by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement hit an army camp, the most senior Yemeni officer killed in the country’s civil war.

Maj.-Gen. Ahmed Saif al-Yafei was killed outside the strategic the Red Sea coast city of al-Mokha, which the army captured from the Houthis last month. Several other military personnel, including a colonel, also died in the attack, according to the online Arabic-language Aden al-Ghad newspaper.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, has been trying to re-take the country from the Houthis, Shi’ite rebels, for nearly two years. The war has killed more than 10,000 people.

“[Yafei] was killed along with several others when the missile hit the camp near al-Mokha city early this morning,” the military source, who is also a member of the general’s family, told Reuters.

Hadi’s presidential office said in a statement carried by the government-run news agency that Yafei died “while carrying out his heroic role of liberating the remainder of the al-Mokha district” from the Houthis. It gave no further details.

The Houthi-run news agency said its fighters targeted a vehicle in which Yafei was traveling on the outskirts of al-Mokha.

Aden al-Ghad said that the bodies of several officers who died in the attack along with Yafei have arrived at a hospital in the southern Yemeni city of Aden, where Hadi’s government is based.

It identified one of them as a colonel but gave no further details on the other casualties.

Hadi supporters, backed by Gulf Arab troops, captured al-Mokha last month after weeks of heavy fighting around the small but strategic port city that had once served as a main port for exporting coffee.

Al-Mokha lies close to the Bab al-Mandab strait through which much of the world’s oil passes.