KSA: 5 Soldiers Killed at Border, 2 Pilots Die in Yemen Crash

Local Editor

Five Saudi border guards were killed in clashes along the Yemen border and two Saudi pilots died when their Apache helicopter crashed inside Yemen on Tuesday in one of the deadliest days for the kingdom's troops in months.

Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry said in a statement the border guards were killed in an eight-hour-long cross-border clash with revolutionaries from Yemen.

In its statement, the Saudi Interior Ministry confessed the death of the five Border Guard personnel - all with the rank of Private First Class - Sulaiman bin Said Al-Maidi; Musa bin Zain Al-Marhabi; Abdullah bin Mohammed Sharahaili; Marzouq bin Said Lasloum; and Jabir bin Ali Al-Alawi.

Also Monday, the Saudi-led coalition said two Saudi pilots died when their helicopter crashed "due to weather conditions," though it did not specify where in Yemen the crash occurred.

According to the Arabic-language al-Masirah channel, the Saudi helicopter crashed in Ber al-Maraziq area between Mareb and Jawf provinces.

Military officials explained that the air defenses of the Yemeni army and popular committees managed to target the hostile helicopter, which led to its downfall.

The US-backed Saudi-led aggression on Yemen started since March 2015 to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Since the beginning of the aggression, Hadi fled to Sanaa and then asked refuge in Saudi Arabia.

The war on Yemen had martyred some 9,000 people and pushed the Arab world's poorest country to the brink of famine. It also enabled both Yemen's al-Qaida branch and an upstart Daesh [Arabic acronym for "ISIS" / "ISIL"] affiliate to seize territory and carry out large-scale attacks.

Yemeni forces had been engaged in retaliatory operations against the Saudi forces deployed in the country.

A cease-fire declared by the UN since April 10 remains shaky, with both sides reporting numerous breaches. The Saudi-backed Hadi regime and the Ansarullah revolutionaries are currently participating in UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team