Missile aimed at Jizan down

RIYADH, July 10, (Agencies): Saudi Arabia’s air defence forces intercepted a missile launched towards the kingdom’s southwestern Jizan region by Yemen’s armed Houthi movement, state media said on Tuesday.

The Houthi-run al-Masirah TV said earlier that a Badr 1 missile had targeted Jizan Economic City, where Saudi Aramco is building a 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery that is expected to become fully operational in 2019.

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

The Iran-aligned Houthis, who control Yemen’s capital

Sanaa, have fired dozens of missiles into the kingdom in recent months, part of a three-year-old conflict widely seen as a proxy battle between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Most of the missiles have been intercepted by the Saudi military.

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened in Yemen’s war in 2015 to unseat the Houthis and restore the internationally-recognised government in exile.

The Western-backed coalition has made no major gains in an offensive launched a month ago to wrest control of Yemen’s Hodeidah port from the Houthis, leaving it without the decisive increase in leverage it had sought against the group in UN-sponsored peace efforts.

More than 800 children as young as 11 years of age were recruited to Yemen’s devastating conflict in 2017 alone, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The latest report of the UN secretary general on children and armed conflict verified 842 boys had been recruited by various parties in Yemen, where years of war have left thousands dead and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

Seventy-six children have been documented as used in active combat.

The rest were recruited to “guard checkpoints and government buildings, for patrolling, fetching water and bringing food and equipment to military positions,” according to a statement released by the UN humanitarian affairs agency (OCHA).

The UN also verified the killing and maiming of 1,316 children last year alone, 51 percent of them in air strikes.

The Yemeni government, backed by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and their regional allies, is battling northern rebels, known as the Houthis, for control of the impoverished country.

The Saudi-led alliance is the only party directly involved in the conflict that is known to conduct air strikes in Yemen.

In 2014, the Houthis drove the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi out of the capital into southern Yemen, prompting the intervention of Saudi Arabia and its allies the following year.

The Yemen conflict has killed nearly 10,000 people since 2015, 2,200 of them children.

Both the government alliance and rebels stand accused of neglecting to protect civilians.

Yemen’s military “Security Belt” force — UAE-backed troops fighting in the southern part of the country — was blacklisted by the UN last month.