Saudis down ballistic missile

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, April 21, (Agencies): Saudi air defences intercepted a “ballistic missile” fired by Yemeni rebels at the kingdom’s southern coastal city of Jizan, the Saudi-led coalition fighting the rebels said.

It was the latest in a series of such attacks.

“Saudi air defences intercepted a ballistic missile launched by the Huthi militias targeting Jizan,” the coalition said in a statement.

The Houthis, in a statement on their news outlet Al-Masirah, claimed that they fired a “Badr 1” ballistic missile and said it struck Jizan Regional Airport.

AFP was unable to reach the airport for comment, but open-source flight information appeared to show flights arriving and departing on time.

Saudi Arabia has since March 2015 led a coalition of Arab states fighting to roll back the Houthi rebels in Yemen and restore its neighbour’s internationally-recognised government to power.

Nearly 10,000 people have since been killed in the conflict, in what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

In March, an Egyptian labourer became the first known fatality in a rebel missile attack on the Saudi capital.

Saudi Arabia accuses its rival Iran of smuggling missiles to the Houthis — a charge Tehran denies.

Troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh on Thursday launched an attack backed by Saudi-led coalition forces against Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels, their former allies, military sources said.

They said the attack was launched under the command of Tareq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, a nephew of the late president, in a region of southwest Yemen between the port city of Mokha and Taez province.

There were casualties on both sides, according to medical sources, but no figures were available.

Saleh’s forces had been allied with the Houthis since the outset of Yemen’s war in 2014, assisting in their capture of the capital Sanaa.

But the Houthis killed Saleh in December 2017 after accusing him of betrayal and holding secret talks with Riyadh, which heads an Arab coalition fighting the rebels to restore Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

Nearly 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the coalition intervened in March 2015.

The Yemeni army has since splintered, with factions in Sanaa maintaining loyalty to the Houthis, other brigades allied with the coalition and some troops in southern Yemen standing by separatists.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross says a staff member has been killed in a shooting in Yemen.

ICRC said on its Twitter account the incident took place early Saturday, without elaborating.

Yemeni security officials said the Hanna Lahoud of Lebanon was killed in the southwestern province of Taiz when gunmen shot at a vehicle carrying ICRC staff members. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

It was not immediately clear how many people were in the vehicle and if there were other casualties.

The outgoing head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Yemen said Friday he believes that more people are dying from indirect effects of the conflict now than from bombing, shelling and ground attacks.

Alexandre Faite pointed to more than 2,000 deaths from cholera and acute watery diarrhea in a little over six months, a crumbling health system, almost no power in most towns, and the absence of key commodities or their availability only at very high prices.

He told a small group of reporters Friday that he has been traveling to capitals including Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Washington to deliver the message that “the situation in Yemen and the results of indirect effects of the hostilities are really dire.”