Yemen's Ansarullah warn Saudi Arabia, UAE

Yemen’s popular Ansarullah movement, which defends the country against a Saudi-led invasion, says it can hit “strategic targets” in the Saudi Arabia and its closest regional ally, unless the invaders observe a UN-brokered ceasefire.

"Our missiles are capable of reaching [the Saudi capital] Riyadh," Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the movement's leader, told Yemen’s al-Masirah television network on Monday.

Al-Houthi said the group’s missiles can possibly even be flown “beyond Riyadh, to Dubai and [the Emirati capital] Abu Dhabi.”

According to a December 2018 report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has claimed the lives of over 60,000 Yemenis since January 2016.

The war has also turned Yemen into the site of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis by pushing it close to the edge of outright famine.

"It is possible to target strategic, vital, sensitive, and influential targets in the event of any escalation in al-Hudaidah," the Houthi leader warned.

The Ansarullah and their allied forces launch back-to-back retaliatory strikes against the southwestern Saudi regions of Jizan, Asir, and Najran.

Last July, the combined forces fired a domestically-designed and -developed ballistic missile at a strategic economic target in Jizan in retaliation for the ongoing war. Ansarullah fighters also fired two ballistic missiles at a facility belonging to Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil giant in Jizan last April.

SS