Dramatic video captures Ansarullah ambush of Saudi troops

A dramatic footage shows how Yemen’s popular Ansarullah fighters conduct an ambush against Saudi Arabian troops in the border region of the kingdom’s extreme southwest.

The independent Al-Masdar News online newspaper posted the purported video of the Sunday incident, recorded by the Ansarullah fighters in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan region.

The footage shows roadside devices planted by the Yemeni fighters going off one after another, hitting Saudi convoys and troops, the paper said on Monday.

The successive blasts claimed the lives of four Saudi troopers who were on a patrol in the mountainous region where Yemeni fighters often carry out hit-and-run operations, the report noted.

Ansarullah snipers slip over the frontier to target Saudi missions in retaliation for airstrikes and artillery shelling in Yemen.

The Ansarullah fighters have been fighting Saudi troops and their mercenaries for more than 2.5 years now. Riyadh seeks to restore a former regime in Yemen through a war which has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians.

Earlier this month, the United Nations blacklisted Saudi Arabia and its allies for massacring and maiming Yemeni children. The world body said Saudi attacks had been responsible for 683 child casualties and 38 verified attacks on schools and hospitals in 2016 alone.

Yemen’s army and its allies seized two districts in the city of Usaylan in the South-Central Shabwah Province from Saudi-backed militants early Monday, pan-Arab paper Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper reported.   

The paper said the militants were mobilizing to seize back the districts, which bear strategic importance because of being best placed to recapture nearby areas.

On Sunday, thousands of people protested in Yemeni Capital Sana'a to condemn the Saudi war. Ansarullah flags and images of Ansarullah Leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, carried by chanting protesters, dotted the landscape.

A member of the Ansarullah political bureau, cited by AFP, accused Saudi Arabia of committing crimes against Yemen, and expressed the desire of the people not to negotiate with the Riyadh coalition, only for the "brutal aggression" to end.

The Saudi bombing campaign continues in Yemen along with US backing, with casualty figures exceeding 16,200 people since the beginning of the invasion in March 2015.

ME