Reuters: Egypt Sends 800 Ground Troops to Yemen to Engage in Saudi-led War
Local Editor
As many as 800 Egyptian soldiers arrived in Yemen on Tuesday, Egyptian security sources said, swelling the ranks of a Gulf Arab military contingent launching a wide war on the country, Reuters news agency reported.
It was the second reported deployment of ground troops there by Egypt. The first was in 1962 when Cairo dispatched 70 thousand, while only half of them returned home in 1967, as the rest were killed by Yemeni resistance fighters.
Four Egyptian units of between 150 to 200 troops along with tanks and transport vehicles arrived in Yemen on Tuesday, Egyptian security sources stated.
"We have sent these forces as part of Egypt’s prominent role in this alliance ... the alliance fights for the sake of our brotherly Arab states, and the death of any Egyptian soldier would be an honor and considered martyrdom for the sake of innocent people," a senior Egyptian military source said.
Yemeni officials put the number of foreign troops from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates [UAE] and Qatar at least around 2,000, while Qatari-owned Al Jazeera TV said at least 10,000 foreign soldiers had arrived, including 1,000 from the UAE.
Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri, a spokesman for the coalition, told Reuters its forces were focusing on overcoming the Yemeni resistance in central and southern provinces, pounding their positions from the air across the country before beginning any thrust towards Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.
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.
