300 Foreign Troopers Killed in Recent Yemeni Forces’ Retaliatory Op: Sources
Local Editor
Yemeni military sources confirmed that the death toll from the recent Toshka missile operation by Yemen’s army and forces on a Saudi-led coalition military camp in the country’s Ma’rib province reached 300 soldiers and officers of Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini and other nationalities, the National News Agency [NNA] reported on Sunday.
UAE had earlier confirmed that 45 Emirati soldiers were killed in the Yemeni operation, where Saudi Arabia and Bahrain also lost 10 and 5 forces, respectively.
Al-Masirah also announced that at least 70 people, mostly Emirati soldiers, have sustained injuries in Friday’s operation, and some of them are in critical condition.
The Yemeni army and Popular Committees forces launched a missile operation on Friday by firing a Toshka rocket at a Saudi-led coalition military base in Yemen’s Ma’rib.
According to sources, more than 40 armored vehicles and military trucks were destroyed in the operation. Three Apache combat helicopters also went up in flames.
Sources also said that such a huge death toll was caused by the explosion of the 500-kg Toshka ballistic missile spearhead over the camp directly during the morning assembly.
An ammunition warehouse in the area also exploded.
Meanwhile, military sources indicated that while the Saudi military spokesman, Ahmad Asiri, was admitting the death of 10 Saudi soldiers in the camp, he talked on Saturday about a large number of wounded personnel, saying that some of them are in critical condition while the others were taken to Saudi Arabia for treatment.
The development came as Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies, including the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, began to launch a military aggression by carrying out airstrikes on Yemen since March 26.
The airstrikes have not been authorized by the United Nations [UN].
The Saudi-led 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.
As a result, the Yemeni army backed by popular committees and tribal fighters has been responding to the aggression by targeting several Saudi border military posts and cleansing several areas across the country from Hadi and al-Qaeda-linked militias.
