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Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

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3 Saudi Military Brigades Destroyed in a Yemeni Offensive in Najran, Thousands Taken Prisoners.

September 29, 2019 

Yemeni Army spokesman, Yahya Saree, announcing results of operation inside Saudi Arabia, September 28, 2019 yextra

Pro-Saudi Yemeni Foreign Minister, Mohammed al-Hadhrami, speaking before UNGA, September 28, 2019

A malnutritioned Yemeni child, as a result of the Saudi-led war, file, September 2019 Site of a Saudi air strike on Yemen, file, September 26, 2019

 

Houthis Release Shocking Videos Of Operation Victory From God

South Front Org, September 29, 2019

On September 29, the Houthis’ media wing released shocking videos of the first phase of “Operation Victory From God,” which took place south of Saudi Arabia’s Najran earlier in September.

The videos were showcased during a press conference of the Yemen group’s spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari, who revealed new details about the operation.

According to Brig. Gen. Sari, the operation was planned for months and involved the Missile Force, the Air Force and the Air-Defense Forces.

The Yemeni Missile Force launched ten Badir-1 rockets at Jizan airport, while the Air Force carried out 21 operations against military targets throughout the Kingdom. These attacks took place over several months before the operation to distract the Saudi-led coalition air forces and hinder their operations.

During the operation, the Yemeni Air Defense Forces targeted the coalition’s attack helicopters, preventing them from provide close air support to trapped Saudi troops south of Najran.

Brig. Gen. Sari summarized the results of Operation Victory from God, as the following:

  • Houthi fighters captured 350 km2 south of Najran, including dozens of key positions.
  • More than 500 Saudi service members and Saudi-backed Yemen fighters were killed.
  • More than 2,000 personnel of the Saudi-led coalition were captured, including Saudi officers.
  • Hundreds of pick-up trucks, armored vehicles, armored personnel carriers (APCs) and engineering vehicles were captured. At least 15 other vehicles were destroyed.

The Houthis’ spokesman also revealed that Saudi warplanes carried out at least 300 airstrikes in a desperate attempt to foil the operation, targeting even its own soldiers and proxies. At least 200 coalition personnel were killed in such “friendly” airstrikes.

“Our forces attempted to provide first aid to the enemy’s personnel who were wounded as a result of the airstrikes, but the continued sorties increased their losses,” Brig. Gen. Sari.

The videos released by the media wing confirmed most of the information revealed by Brig. Gen. Sari, who promised that more videos will be released in the upcoming few days.

The Houthis’ spokesman noted that Operation Victory of God is still ongoing, calling on Saudi-backed Yemeni fighters to leave the front lines and return to their homes.

The Saudi-led coalition has not yet commented on the shocking footage. The heavy losses could force the Kingdom to reassessed its policy in Yemen.

More on this topic:

https://southfront.org/houthis-release-shocking-videos-of-operation-victory-from-god/

***

The following news stories are from the Yemeni independent website Al-Masdar ( http://www.almasdaronline.com/category/42  ):

*** 

(Pro-Saudi) Yemeni Foreign Minister to the United Nations: UAE departed from coalition objectives, bombed Yemeni army and supported rebel militias

September 29, 2019, Al-Masdar online- , ٢٩ ÓÈÊãÈÑ ٢٠١٩

In his address to the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Yemen's Foreign Minister said, "The Iran-backed coupist militia of Houthis ruined in a handful of years the dream of all Yemenis in freedom, equal citizenship and dignified life."

Mohammed al-Hadhrami was referring to the Houthi coup of September 2014 that sabotaged a historical political transition in the country and triggered in 2015 the armed conflict continuing to now.

"The dream of Yemen and Yemenis was about to materialize, by the virtue of the GCC Initiative and the outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference," he continued, "but despite what happened the Yemeni people will not give way to lassitude."
"In the same way they toppled the (pre-1962) myth of God-given reign … they are going to topple the worse version of that theocracy."

"I stand before you today broken-hearted for how situations ended up in my country of deeply rooted history and civilizations . My country is severely wounded because of the war imposed by an armed religious militia that habitually tortures, excludes and murders oppositionists," he said naming Iran, Houthis backer, as "the first sponsor of terrorism in the world."

He called on the UN Security Council to shoulder its responsibility in forcing the militia to honor the Stockholm Agreement; withdraw from Hodeidah port, release all prisoners and lift the years-long on Yemen's third largest city of Taiz.

Addressing the new turbulence in the south, he said that after the liberation of Aden port from Houthis in 2015, the government struggled and continued to do its best in mitigating the impact and ensuring recovery for the nation politically and economically. "Things went on like that until the Southern Transitional Council rebelled and seized public offices in the interim capital with financial, military and logistical backing from the UAE."

He said the armed forces, trying later to retake Aden and two other cities lost to the STC, came under direct airstrikes "launched by the UAE warplanes in violation of the international law…and in deviation from the stated mission of the Arab Coalition."

He appreciated the Saudi efforts to address the rebellion and "these misconducts of the UAE in the liberated territories" in what unifies efforts in Yemen against the Houthi coup in the north.

He also thanked donors who provided Yemen with humanitarian aid in particular Saudi Arabia for helping alleviate the impact of the humanitarian crisis in the country.

15 civilians injured in Houthi shelling targeting neighborhoods and market south of Hodeidah

September 29, 2019, ALMASDARONLINE, ٢٩ ÓÈÊãÈÑ ٢٠١٩

Fifteen civilians were injured, seven of them seriously, as a result of shelling by Houthi militias on Saturday on a market and residential neighborhoods in Al-Tahita  district in southern Yemen.

Local sources told Al-Masdar Online that Houthi militias shelled after people left prayers this afternoon in al-Tur market on the asphalt line west of the Tahita district, and the shelling injured 10 civilians, including four seriously injured.

Al-Houthi militias also shelled the residential neighborhoods of Al-Tahita on Saturday evening, injuring five family members, three of whom were critically injured.
At the same time, Houthi militias shelled with artillery and medium machine guns, today, a number of residential neighborhoods and joint forces positions east of the city of Hodeidah and in the districts of Al-Drihimi and Hays in the south of the province.

Houthis say coalition fighters carried out 229 raids in Yemen in a week

September 29, 2019, ALMASDARONLINE, ٢٩ ÓÈÊãÈÑ ٢٠١٩


Houthi group military spokesman Yahya Suray’a said that Saudi-led Arab coalition fighters carried out 229 airstrikes on positions in Yemen in one week.
On his official Twitter account, Suray’a posted statistics on coalition raids, mostly focused on the provinces of Sa'da and Hajjah.

According to the Houthi spokesman, the raids included the provinces of Amran, Sanaa and Al-Dhale’a, some of which targeted communications towers and farms.
The raids come nearly a week after the head of the Houthi political council announced an initiative to stop the Iranian-backed group's attacks against Saudi Arabia after they adopted attacks on two Aramco plants on November 14.

The increasing number of raids is indicative of a pragmatic Saudi response to the Houthi initiative.

A coalition raid last week targeted the home of a civilian in the Qa’taba area of Al-Dhale’a, killing 15, mostof them women and children.

The Houthis announced on November 23rd the death of the leader, Major General Mohammed Ali Da’bash, who leads one of the main fighting factions in the armed group.

The Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday that Saudi stowed and halted raids in four Yemeni regions, including Sanaa.
Neither the Saudi-led coalition nor the Houthis could comment on the report.

On Saturday, the Houthi military spokesman issued a statement on fighting with Saudi-backed government forces in the border areas with the kingdom, in the Kataf district of Sa'da governorate, at the end of August.

Al-Houthi said they have Saudi prisoners, while a military source in the national army says that the majority of the prisoners killed during the operation belong to the "Al-Fatth Brigade " led by Salafist preacher Radad al-Hashimi.

The battle itself left a large number of al-Fatah members dead and captured, as well as the commander of the axis of the Houthi militia, his deputy, and dozens of fighters in the fighting that lasted nearly a week. 

***

The following news stories are from the pro-Houthi website Yemen Extra (http://www.yemenextra.net/):

***

Saudi brigades destroyed, scores of paid fighters seized in Najran offensive: Yemeni official

On Sep 29, 2019, YemenExtra, Y.A

The spokesman for Yemeni Armed Forces said that three Saudi military brigades were completely destroyed after Yemeni Army forces mounted a large-scale military offensive in the kingdom’s southern border region of Najran.

Speaking at a press conference in the capital Sana’a on Saturday evening, Brigadier General Yahya Saree described the major and efficient operation, dubbed God’s Victory, as the biggest-ever since Saudi Arabia and some of its allies embarked an atrocious military campaign on Yemen more than four years ago, noting that the offensive lasted several months and inflicted dramatic losses – both in terms of military hardware and personnel – upon the enemy, the media bureau of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement said in a statement

Sarie confirmed that thousands of the enemy forces, most of them traitors and deceived, were taken prisoners, while hundreds others were killed and injured, including large numbers of commanders, officers and soldiers of the Saudi army during the operation.

“After the surrender of thousands of the enemy troops, the Yemeni army and popular committees worked on securing them from retaliatory airstrikes of the aggression coalition warplanes that targeted the captives with dozens of raids,” the spokesman said.

Hundreds of square kilometers of land were liberated during the operation, he added.

The high-profile Yemeni military official highlighted that Saudi commanders, officers and soldiers are among those captured by Yemeni forces and Popular Committees fighters.

“Only 72 hours after the start of the operation, our forces laid full siege to enemy troops. Three brigades of traitors with units of the Saudi army were completely destroyed, and scores of people taken hostage,” Saree said.

He added, “Under the directives of the leadership [of Ansarullah movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi], all prisoners were treated according to the principles of Islam, Yemen’s customs and traditions as well as human ethics. Our forces worked to protect thousands of surrendered enemy forces against retaliatory raids by the coalition of aggression.”

In March 2015, the US -backed –Saudi-led coalition started  a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people and  prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, the war has yielded little to that effect.

Despite the coalition claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

 

Amnesty International : US, France, and UK kill civilians in Yemen

On Sep 26, 2019, YemenExtra, Y.A

Since the start of the Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US, air strikes in March 2015, Amnesty has investigated dozens of attacks and repeatedly found and identified remnants of US-manufactured munitions.

A bomb manufactured by a US corporation was used in a Saudi-led attack on a residential home in Yemen, killing six civilians including three children, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

The air strike, carried out by the Saudi and Emirati-led coalition, took place on 28 June and targeted the non-military site in the Ta’iz governorate, located in the southwest of the country.

It has been revealed that the laser-guided bomb was manufactured by US company Raytheon and is the latest evidence in allegations pointing to US involvement in the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen and serious violations of international humanitarian law.

The rights group analyzed photographs of the remnants of the weapon dug out from the site of the strike by family members, concluding that the bomb that hit a residential building was a US-made 500 pound (230kg) GBU-12 Paveway II.

“It is unfathomable and unconscionable that the USA continues to feed the conveyor belt of arms flowing into Yemen’s devastating conflict,” said Rasha Mohamed, Amnesty’s Yemen researcher.

Mohamed lashed out at the US, the UK and France for supplying arms to the Saudi-led coalition, holding them accountable for “human rights violations” and “war crimes” in Yemen.

In March 2015, the US -backed –Saudi-led coalition started  a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people and  prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, the war has yielded little to that effect.

Despite the coalition claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

UN Report: the Saudi-led coalition pushes 79% of Yemeni People below Poverty Line

On Sep 29, 2019, YemenExtra, Y.A

Yemen will become the poorest country in the world if its conflict goes on through 2022, a new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) projects. Since 2014, war has driven poverty in Yemen from 47 percent of the population to a projected 75 percent by the end of 2019. If fighting continues through 2022, Yemen will rank as the poorest country in the world, with 79 percent of the population living under the poverty line and 65 percent classified as extremely poor, the report.

The report said that in the absence of conflict Yemen could have made progress toward achieving the SDGs, the global anti-poverty framework agreed in 2015 with a target date of 2030. But more than four years of fighting has set back human development by 21 years—and Yemen would be unlikely to achieve any of the SDGs even if the war were to stop today. Using cutting-edge data modeling and open-source information, the report finds that Yemen’s war will have more than tripled the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty if fighting persists. It will skyrocket from 19 percent of the population in 2014 to a projected 65 percent in 2022.

In the absence of conflict, Yemen could have made progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, the global framework for combating poverty agreed in 2015 with the target date of 2030, the report said.

“But more than four years of fighting have hampered human development for 21 years, and Yemen is unlikely to achieve any of the SDGs even if the war stops today,” the report added.

The report predicted that by 2022 Yemen would suffer from the largest poverty gap in the world (the distance between the average income and the poverty line).

UNDP’s report attributed the high poverty rate in Yemen to factors related to the ongoing war, including the collapse of the economy in which the country has lost $ 89 billion of its economic activity since 2015.

“This report is a reminder that Yemen cannot afford to wait. We must act now,” Ambassador Jürgen Schulz, Deputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, said. “Without a political solution, we will see Yemen disappear right before our eyes. That’s why there is no alternative to the efforts of Special Envoy Martin Griffiths to advance an inclusive political process.”

More than 80 percent of Yemen’s roughly 30 million people now require humanitarian assistance and protection. The report launched today argues that if Yemen remains at war through 2030, the costs will be borne by generations to come, with poverty seeding ever more deeply, institutions decimated, and Yemen more vulnerable to an ongoing and vicious cycle of conflict and suffering.

In March 2015, the US -backed –Saudi-led coalition started  a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people and  prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, the war has yielded little to that effect.

Despite the coalition claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

Saudi-led coalition worsens the disaster in southern Yemen

On Sep 27, 2019

YemenExtra, Y.A

Islah party paid fighers on Friday imposed a suffocating siege on the towns of Ahwar and Loder in the occupied province of Abyan.

Sources in Abyan told YemenExtra that Islah military force from Shabwa arrived in the city of Ahwar and imposed a suffocating siege on the city of Loder in the occupied province of Abyan.

The sources added that the situation is tense now after the security belt paid fighters loyal to the occupation of the United Arab Emirates refused tribal mediation to hand over points under their control in the city of Lauder.

In March 2015, the US -backed –Saudi-led coalition started  a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people and  prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, the war has yielded little to that effect.

Despite the coalition claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

Saudi-led coalition doesn’t want peace in Yemen

On Sep 27, 2019

YemenExtra, Y.A

24 citizens were killed and 16 others injured by the Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US, airstrikes after a peace initiative declared by the Supermen Political Council, according to a Health Ministry Spokesman statement on Thursday.

The spokesman denounced the international community’s silence towards the coalition’s crimes in response to the peace initiative blessed by the European Union and the United Nations.

In March 2015, the US -backed –Saudi-led coalition started  a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people and  prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, the war has yielded little to that effect.

Despite the coalition claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. 

***

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