Yemeni Air Defenses Repel Saudi Air Raid against Marib

By Staff, Agencies

Spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yehya Saree, said the country’s air defense units managed to thwart a Saudi attack against strategic and residential areas in the country’s central oil-producing province of Marib.

A Saudi F-15 fighter jet sought to bombard areas in the al-Jubah district of the province, located 173 kilometers northeast of the capital Sanaa, on Thursday evening, when the launch of a domestically-built and long-range Fater-1 [Innovator-1] surface-to-air missile forced the jet off the Yemeni airspace, Saree wrote in a post on his Twitter page.

He added that the footage of the operation will be published in the near future.

Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.

The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.

Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s incessant bombardment of the impoverished country, the Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.