UAE says soldier killed in Saudi Arabia near Yemen border
SANAA, Yemen (AP) — The United Arab Emirates said Wednesday that one of its soldiers was killed in an area of Saudi Arabia on the border with Yemen.
The UAE’s state-run WAM news agency reported the corporal was killed in the Najran region, which is on the Saudi-Yemen border, but did not specify how he was killed.
The UAE has been pulling its troops out of Yemen after being Saudi Arabia’s main partner in the yearslong war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The conflict has ground to a stalemate and sparked a devastating humanitarian crisis.
Separately, a missile attack killed at least three senior military officers and three soldiers from Yemen’s internationally recognized government, the defense ministry said.
This was the second attack in the past two weeks against government forces in the central province of Marib. No group claimed responsibility for either attack.
Among the dead Wednesday were Brigadier Abdel-Raqib al-Sayadi, the commander of the military camp in Sahn al-Gin district, the defense ministry statement said.
At least 12 soldiers were also wounded, according to government officials who spoke on spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media.
The previous attack in Marib province narrowly missed Defense Minister Mohammed al-Maqdishi. He survived a large explosion that hit his convoy on Oct. 29 while it was inside a complex of buildings used as the ministry’s interim headquarters in the province, killing two guards.
Wadah Dobish, a spokesman for the government’s forces, said Tuesday they had repelled a Houthi attack in fighting south of the Red Sea port city of Hodeida. Four Houthi fighters were killed, Dobish said.
Last week, a Houthi drone and missile attack in the Red Sea town of Mocha struck warehouses used by a government-allied force. The attack caused massive explosions and fires that killed eight people and damaged a nearby hospital run by Doctors Without Borders.
Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels have been holding indirect, behind-the-scenes talks to end the war, officials from both sides have told The Associated Press. The negotiations are taking place with Oman, a Gulf Arab country that borders both Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as mediator.
After five years of conflict, Yemen remains a divided country. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have controlled the capital Sanaa and much of the north since 2014. A Saudi-led, U.S.-backed military coalition has been fighting on behalf of the internationally recognized government since 2015.
___
Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
