The United Arab Emirates intensified air strikes in Yemen on Saturday, the day after dozens of its soldiers died in a rebel attack there. Houthi
The United Arab Emirates intensified air strikes in Yemen on Saturday, the day after dozens of its soldiers died in a rebel attack there.
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Houthi rebel positions were targeted but in the capital Sanaa, controlled by the Shi’ite Houthis, more than 20 civilians were also reported killed.
This was the latest bloody episode in the air campaign by a Saudi-led coalition against the Iranian-allied Houthi militia. More than 4,000 Yemenis have died in the conflict.
The rebels struck on Friday, with a missile attack on a weapons storage facility in Marib province. It killed at least 60 coalition soldiers, 45 of them from the UAE.
The UAE has played a key role in the Arab coalition fighting the Houthis after they pushed Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile and took over much of the country.
Ten Saudi soldiers and five Bahraini servicemen were also killed in Friday’s Houthi missile attack, in what was the highest death toll for the coalition in months of air strikes in Yemen.
In Bahrain, grieving relatives and Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad al Khalifa, a member of the ruling royal family and commander of Bahrain’s Royal Guard, were among those paying tribute as soldiers’ bodies were flown home.