Obama Condoles UAE over 45 Army Deaths in Yemen
Local Editor
US President Barack Obama has offered his condolences to the United Arab Emirates [UAE] on Saturday over the deaths of its 45 soldiers killed in Yemen.
Obama expressed his "deep condolences" in a phone call to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme UAE Armed Forces Commander Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the White House said in a statement.
The statement said: "The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the people of the UAE and with the families of the fallen".
The 45 soldiers were killed on Friday when the Yemeni army and Popular Committees launched a missile operation by firing a Toshka rocket at a Saudi-led coalition military base in Yemen’s Marib province.
The retaliatory raids also killed 10 Saudi and 5 Bahrain soldiers.
The US President offered his condolences as a Saudi-led coalition, backed by the United States, has been carrying out a military aggression on Yemen by launching airstrikes against the country since March 26. The airstrikes have not been authorized by the United Nations [UN].
The ’civilian’ death toll in Yemen has risen to at least 1,916, with another 4,186 civilians wounded since the escalation of the conflict in March, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR] reported recently last month.
The US-led Saudi aggression began in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to the country’s fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Saudi Arabia.
