The air strikes targeted troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, an ally of the Houthis, across the country and hit a Houthi base in what was the al-Imam University, a religious school in northern Sanaa, locals said.
Advertisement
The bodies of the Emirati soldiers killed in the attack on their base in Marib were taken to the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi aboard an air force transport plane.
Coalition aircraft unleashed waves of air strikes on the rebel-held capital from the early hours, sowing panic.
Emirati officials vowed that the deaths in a missile attack in the battleground eastern oil province of Marib would not sap their commitment to the coalition’s mission to restore exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
“Ten Saudi soldiers from the Arab coalition forces were martyred”, in the attack on the weapons depot, Saudi military spokesman Brig Gen Ahmed Assiri said.
In the neighbouring province of Baida, 27 people were killed – 14 rebels, 10 loyalist fighters and three civilians – in two days of coalition raids on the town of Mukayris, military sources said.
The UAE said 22 of its troops were killed in Yemen and Bahrain said it lost five soldiers yesterday, the deadliest day for a Saudi-led coalition battling Yemeni Shiite rebels.
The White House said US President Barack Obama telephoned Mohammed bin Zayed on Saturday to offer his condolences.
Friday’s death toll was the highest for the coalition since it began its assault on the Houthis in March, and is one of the worst losses of life in the history of the UAE military.
But after the Houthis seized the Yemeni capital past year, Hadi fled to the southern city of Aden, his main power base, and then into exile in Saudi Arabia.
Despite the severity of the attack, the UAE is not expected to end its involvement in Yemen, Mustafa Allan, director of the National Security and Terrorism Studies Department at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, told Bloomberg. “The mission of the coalition forces is to restore peace and stability to Yemen”, daily Al Riyadh quoted him as saying.
Yemeni military sources in Marib have spoken of the arrival of some 1,000 Saudi soldiers armed with tanks and other armored vehicles, as well the Qatari reinforcements.
Advertisement
Up to 4,500 people have now been killed in the conflict, including hundreds of children, with the United Nations issuing desperate appeals for foreign donors after it revealed an estimated 80 per cent of the population needed humanitarian aid in June.
