Yemeni snipers shoot three Saudi soldiers dead in Jizan

Yemeni army soldiers, supported by fighters from allied Popular Committees, have shot dead three Saudi soldiers in the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Jizan, in retaliation for the Riyadh regime’s military campaign against the crisis-hit country.  

The media bureau of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement reported on Wednesday that Yemeni forces had fatally shot the troopers in the region's Quwa and Hamezah villages, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported. 

The report added that Yemeni troops and their allies also detonated an explosive device south of Hamezah, targeting a Saudi armored vehicle and killing all those on board.

Meanwhile, an unnamed Yemeni military source said gunmen have shot and killed Colonel Mohammad Qasem al-Hariri, a security officer loyal to resigned president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, north of the southern port city of Aden.

In another development, Saudi warplanes carried out two aerial attacks against an outdoor market in the Mawza district of Yemen's southern province of Ta'izz, leaving a number of civilians dead and injured.

Smoke rises as Yemenis inspect the damage at the site of Saudi airstrikes in the northwestern city of Sa’ada on January 6, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

Elsewhere in the Nihm district of the northwestern Yemeni province of Sa'ada, Saudi fighter jets launched three airstrikes, but there have been no immediate reports of casualties.

At least 13,600 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen in 2015. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

The Saudi-led war has also triggered a deadly cholera epidemic across Yemen.

According to the World Health Organization’s latest count, the cholera outbreak has killed 2,167 people since the end of April and is suspected to have infected 841,906.

A malnourished Yemeni child receives treatment at a hospital in the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah on January 16, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

On November 26, the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) said that more than 11 million children in Yemen were in acute need of aid, stressing that it was estimated that every 10 minutes a child died of a preventable disease there.

Additionally, the UN has described the current level of hunger in Yemen as “unprecedented,” emphasizing that 17 million people are now food insecure in the country.

It added that 6.8 million, meaning almost one in four people, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.