Yemeni Houthi rebel strike kills nine Sudanese troops

DUBAI: A Yemeni Houthi rebel strike on a military camp in the country’s northwest killed nine Sudanese soldiers from a pro-government coalition on Wednesday, Yemeni defence ministry sources said.

“Nine members of the Sudanese forces were killed and 30 others wounded this morning by a Houthi missile,” one of the sources told AFP.

The attack targeted a military camp in Midi, in Hajjah province near the border with Saudi Arabia, the source added, requesting anonymity. Another defence ministry official and a local source confirmed the toll.

A reported Houthi attack on coalition sites in the same province in mid-December killed 14 Sudanese soldiers. The Saudi-led military coalition has been supporting Yemen’s internationally recognised government since 2015 in its battle against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The Houthis control much of the country’s north, including the capital Sanaa. Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world, has sent thousands of soldiers to fight in Yemen, which lies across the other side of the Red Sea.

The troops include men from the notorious Janjaweed militia, which is accused of atrocities in the conflict that erupted in 2003 in Sudan’s western Darfur region. In late 2019, Sudan’s transitional government said the country had reduced its troop strength in Yemen from 15,000 to 5,000 men.

In early 2020, dozens of Sudanese protested in their capital Khartoum, alleging relatives had been recruited by a firm in the United Arab Emirates to be security guards, but they had in fact been sent to war zones in Libya and Yemen.

The UAE is also a member of the Saudi-led coalition.

The Yemen conflict, which began in 2014 after the Houthis seized Sanaa, has sparked what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.