Yemen's president visits officials injured by Houthi drone strike

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, January 13, 2019
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ADEN, Yemen, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's internationally-backed President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi paid a visit on Sunday to a hospital in Saudi Arabia to inspect health conditions of officials injured by a Houthi drone strike in southern Lahj province three days ago.

Hadi along with other officials arrived at Prince Sultan Military Hospital in Saudi Arabia's capital of Riyadh and inspected the health conditions of Lahj Governor Ahmed Abdullah Turki and Director of the country's Military College Abdulkaream Azowmahi, according to the state-run Saba news agency.

The two senior commanders and several others were wounded by a Houthi drone strike that targeted a military parade held at Anad strategic air base in Lahj last Thursday.

Earlier in the day, chief of Yemen's military intelligence agency Saleh Tamah injured in the drone strike died of his wounds in Aden, the country's Defence Ministry announced.

Tamah was born in 1950 in Lahj province, in Yemen's south, and appointed by the internationally-backed Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to lead the military intelligence agency last year.

Security sources confirmed to Xinhua that the Houthi rebels used an Iranian-made drone and shelled a military parade held for batches of new army graduates at the Anad military air base in Lahj province, killing at least six soldiers and injuring 20 others including high-ranking commanders.

The Houthis said through their official media that the drone attack on the military parade in Lahj came as a "response to the continued raids of Saudi aggression, targeting of innocent citizens."

A number of pro-government army commanders including the Fourth Regional Military Command General Fadhel Hassan and deputy Chief-of-Staff General Saleh Zandani are still receiving treatment in Aden's hospitals.

Yemeni observers warned that the Houthi drone strike that targeted the Saudi-backed Yemeni army commanders could jeopardize the ongoing efforts aimed at ending the country's conflict peacefully.

The impoverished Arab country has been locked in a civil war since the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa, in 2014.

Saudi Arabia leads an Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of Hadi after Houthi rebels forced him into exile.

The United Nations has listed Yemen as the country of the world's top humanitarian crisis, with seven million citizens on the brink of famine. Enditem

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