Al Houthi leader’s brother reported killed
Abdul Khalek Al Houthi, the sixth most wanted man on the Arab coalition’s list, is widely reported to have been killed in an air strike in the Bajil district in Hodeida early yesterday.
Abdul Khalek Al Houthi, brother of militia leader Abdul Malek Al Houthi, is widely reported to have been killed in a coalition air strike in the Bajil district in Hodeida.
A number of other militants were also reported to be killed and injured in the attack.
Abdul Khalek was the sixth most wanted man on the coalition’s list, and was targeted before dawn yesterday.
Al Arabiya said in late October 2013 that he led a group of militiamen dressed in Yemeni army uniforms, in an attack on locations in Dimaj, resulting in multiple deaths.
He had also ordered his men to prepare an attack on diplomatic facilities in Sana’a in September 2014.
The news came as the US military released a video showing small ships in the Gulf of Aden smuggling weapons amid the ongoing war in Yemen.
The short video, published yesterday, says the guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham seized over 1,000 weapons from the “stateless” vessels, the Associated Press reported.
The US Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Meanwhile, a US defence official told Reuters on Wednesday that the US Navy seized hundreds of small arms, including AK-47s, from an unflagged boat in the Gulf of Aden.
Weapons seized
The 5th Fleet repeatedly has accused Iran of smuggling arms via the sea to Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels, who have held Yemen’s capital since September 2014.
It points to seizures over a four-week period in early 2016, when coalition warships stopped three dhows in the Arabian Sea.
The dhows carried thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles as well as sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles and other weapons.
One dhow carried 2,000 new assault rifles with serial numbers in sequential order, suggesting they came from a national stockpile, a report by the group Conflict Armament Research said.
The rocket-propelled grenade launchers also bore hallmarks of being manufactured in Iran, the group said.