Saudi, UAE officers killed in Taiz one day before scheduled Yemen ceasefire

The Yemeni army, backed by popular committees loyal to the Houthi rebel movement, targeted a Saudi military headquarters in the Yemen’s southwestern province of Ta’izz with a Tochka ballistic missile on Sunday night, Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah news website reported.

Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthi group is fighting a civil war against loyalists of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, whose embattled government has been backed by air strikes and ground forces from a mainly Gulf Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

According to Reuters, dozens of other Arabian Gulf, Yemeni and Sudanese coalition soldiers were killed in the Tochka rocket strike on the Red Sea army camp.

The Saudi state news agency quoted a coalition statement as saying Saudi Col Abdullah al-Sahyan and Emirati officer Sultan al-Ketbi were killed early on Monday while “carrying out their duties in following up the progress of operations of liberating” Taiz province.

The anti-Saudi Houthi militia announced that the two had been killed in a rocket attack on the Red Sea coast. The Houthis and Saleh’s former political party, the General People’s Congress, are sending representatives to Switzerland on Tuesday for talks with Yemen’s internationally recognised government under President Hadi.

A week-long extendable ceasefire is scheduled to come into effect on Monday to coincide with the talks.

Sanaa residents also said that warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition had carried out six airstrikes on Houthi positions in the Hamadan Directorate. Two previous attempts at ceasefires, in May and July, were followed by accusations of breaches by both sides.

The United Nations says more than 5,800 people have been killed in Yemen, about half of them civilians, and more than 27,000 wounded since March.

In March, Houthis advanced on the port city of Aden, prompting Hadi to flee the country for the Saudi capital Riyadh.

The desperate humanitarian situation in Yemen has additionally deteriorated badly, with more than 21 million individuals – four fifths of the public – now needing assistance.