Yemen’s warring sides report heavy casualties in fresh attacks

Sanaa:  Yemen’s government forces and the Houthi group reported fresh attacks across several fronts, with both sides claiming heavy casualties.

Majid al-Nuzaili, spokesperson for the government forces, said on social media platform X on Saturday (local time) that government forces had carried out 723 attacks on Houthi positions in recent hours, including 37 airstrikes, 56 drone attacks and hundreds of rocket and artillery strikes.

He said the attacks targeted Houthi troop gatherings, fortifications and military equipment, claiming that about 321 fighters and commanders had been killed or wounded and 117 military vehicles and pieces of equipment destroyed or disabled, reports Xinhua news agency.

Meanwhile, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said on X that the group had fired several ballistic missiles at Saudi troop gatherings in the Kharaz area of southern Yemen, claiming the strikes killed or wounded dozens of soldiers and destroyed numerous military vehicles.

Sarea also accused Saudi warplanes of carrying out 72 airstrikes against civilian sites across four Yemeni provinces over the past 24 hours. The claims from both sides could not be independently verified.

Also on Saturday, coalition spokesman Turki Al-Maliki said on X that coalition forces had intercepted and destroyed two drones launched by the Houthis toward the Riyadh and southern regions of the kingdom.

Yemen has been mired in conflict since late 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, prompting the Saudi-led coalition to intervene in 2015 in support of the internationally recognised government.