Three Emirati soldiers killed fighting in Yemen

The Saudi-led Arab coalition struck Houthi forces and weapons in a number of Yemeni cities on Friday including Hodeida where more than a dozen of the Houthis were killed.

A Saudi-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen at Hadi’s request since March.

The Sabanew.net website, loyal to the Hadi, said Houthi militias had shelled several residential communities in the southern town of Dalea, about 170 km north of Aden.

The New York Times reports “Small numbers of Saudi and Emirati troops have been fighting in Yemen for at least the last few weeks, according to southern Yemeni commanders”.

Houthi forces also held up 16 trucks carrying humanitarian aid from World Food Programme through Yemen’s Al Hudaydah province to support displaced persons in the major city of Taiz.

Zawbah said that “tourism marriage” had been very common in Yemen over the recent years, whereby “Saudi men in their forties and fifties would marry young women aged as young as 12 in return for money given to her family”.

Without saying where or when they were killed, WAM said they died while taking part in “the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia to support the legitimate government in Yemen”.

Sources in Yemen’s government confirmed the move, though there has been no official announcement, and Yemen’s exiled information minister said on Tuesday that commercial flights would be diverted from the capital to the southern port of Aden.

Also Sunday, global Committee of the Red Cross President Peter Maurer said the organization has committed to doubling its program in the country to respond to the “catastrophic” situation.

Meanwhile, a plane belonging to Yemenia, the national carrier, landed in Aden with 150 Yemenis who had fled to Djibouti when the fighting intensified in March, airport officials there said.

He was accused of aiding the Huthis to undermine UN-backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in February.