ADEN, Oct 10, (APP/AFP) – Three pro-government fighters have been killed “by mistake” in Yemen in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition supporting them against rebels, loyalist military sources said Monday.
Four others were also wounded in the strike overnight, on a position that forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in a mountainous area between the Abyan and Bayda provinces, they said.
Coalition-backed pro-government fighters control the southern province of Abyan, while the Huthi Shiite rebels, who Iran is accused of supporting, hold the neighbouring central province of Bayda.
The coalition intervened in March last year in support of Hadi’s government after the Huthis overran much of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.
Tensions have mounted between both sides since the Huthis accused the coalition of killing more than 140 people in a strike on a funeral in Sanaa on Saturday.
Rebel-allied former president Ali Abdullah Saleh has called for escalating the fight against “backward” Saudi Arabia along its borders “to take revenge”.
Other military sources said that two loyalist fighters were killed on Monday in a dawn rebel attack in an oil-rich area of Usaylan in the province of Shabwa east of Bayda.
More than 6,700 people — almost two-thirds of them civilians — have been killed and at least three million displaced since the coalition launched military operations in Yemen, according to the United Nations.
