Saudi-led planes hit Houthi-controlled government buildings

According to Bahrain, reportedly in the same blast, five of its troops had lost their lives on Friday.

Also targeted were Huthi positions in the northern areas of Sufan and Al-Nahda, forcing scores of residents to flee, and rebel positions near the Saudi and Emirati embassies, witnesses said.

Ten Saudi troops were among those slain in a Friday attack on an arms depot in Yemen’s Maarib province by the Shia Houthi militant group, Ahmed al-Asiri, spokesman for a Saudi-led coalition that is fighting the Houthis, said late Saturday.

Saudi Arabia and Gulf allies have been backing exiled President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi, fearing that the expansion of the mainly Shiite Houthis will give their regional rival Iran a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula.

Witnesses said Sunday’s bombardment was one of the heaviest since the air campaign began.

They were also the first time that the Gulf countries backing Hadi admitted to the extent of their involvement on the ground backing up the loose alliance of local militias, Sunni Islamists and southern Yemeni separatists who have been taking on the Houthis.

“We fully support the political objectives of the Coalition to restore unconditionally the legitimate Government in Yemen and withdrawal of Houthis from the territories seized by them including Sana’a”.

But security has yet to be restored in the port city, where vandals dug up several graves and smashed headstones at a cemetery that Britain, the city’s former colonial ruler, had maintained after it left some 50 years ago, a local official said.

Meanwhile Saturday, U.S. President Barack Obama called the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to extend his condolences for the slain troops, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported.

The Huthis said they had used a Tochka missile to attack the Safer camp in Marib province of eastern Yemen.

The Saudi-led forces had been sending military hardware to Marib, where Hadi loyalists have been preparing for an offensive against Sanaa.

Coalition ally Bahrain said five of its soldiers were killed in southern Saudi Arabia where they had been posted to help defend the border with war-wracked Yemen.

The rebels hailed the missile strike as “revenge for the crimes and the war of extermination being carried out by the Saudi aggressor and its mercenaries”.

Yemeni military sources in Marib have spoken of the arrival of some 1,000 Saudi soldiers armed with tanks and other armoured vehicles, as well the Qatari reinforcements.

Friday’s heavy coalition losses came as Saudi King Salman was in Washington for talks with US President Barack Obama at which Yemen figured high on the agenda.

Almost 4,500 people, including more than 2,000 civilians, have died in Yemen fighting since March as per United Nations figures, according to BBC News.