Qatar Confirms Deploying 1,000 Foreign Troops to Yemen
Local Editor
A Qatari official confirmed on Tuesday that the Gulf state had dispatched 1,000 troops for Yemen, "ready to fight" as part of the Saudi-led coalition, which is launching a military aggression by carrying out airstrikes in Yemen.
The source told AFP that the Qatari forces have not yet entered the country but were positioned at Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia.
It was the first confirmation by an official in Doha of a recent report this week by Qatar’s al-Jazeera news channel that the country had sent troops to Yemen.
"We have sent troops who will be deployed along with Saudi troops," the official said.
"They are at the Saudi/Yemen border, they have not entered Yemen. They should be entering Yemen in the next few days", the official also said.
The source added that the Qatari soldiers, armed with heavy ground weapons, were "ready to fight."
Meanwhile, al-Jazeera reported that the number of troops of the Saudi-led coalition has reached 10,000.
"The number of coalition soldiers who have already entered Yemen has risen to 10,000," Jazeera correspondent Abdul Mahsi al-Sheikh reported from Saudi Arabia.
Qatar’s air force has previously taken part in the air aggression which began in March this year [2015].
Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies, including Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE, 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 ’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.
