Houthi Rocket Fire in Yemen Kills 45 Saudi-led Coalition Soldiers

Forty-five soldiers from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were killed on Friday while taking part in a Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen against Houthi forces, the United Arab Emirates' state news agency WAM said.

It was the deadliest attack on Gulf Arab forces since the offensive began. Saudi Arabia and a coalition of other Sunni Muslim Gulf states have been fighting since March to restore Yemen's exiled government and repel the Iran-allied Shiite Houthis, who took control of the capital Sanaa in September last year.

WAM initially reported Friday that 22 Emirati soldiers were killed in Yemen before raising the death toll to 45, while Bahrain's official news agency BNA initially said five soldiers were killed while protecting the southern borders of neighboring Saudi Arabia.

"A rocket and an explosion at a weapons cache has targeted the martyrs," Anwar Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said on Twitter Friday.

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The Houthis said they fired a rocket at a weapons cache in a camp used by Gulf coalition forces in the central Marib area, killing dozens of Emirati and Yemeni soldiers and destroying a number of Apache helicopters and armed vehicles. Residents in Marib told Reuters they saw fire raging at the camp and plumes of smoke.

Before the latest incident, at least five Emirati soldiers had been killed in Yemen since the offensive began.

Militias and army units loyal to President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is currently in self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia, have made advances toward the Houthi-controlled capital in the last two months. But the group remains ensconced in Yemen's north, and military and civilian casualties have been mounting as the civil conflict rages on across the nation.

The Saudi-led coalition has been supporting anti-Houthi fighters with air strikes, military training and the delivery of tanks and heavy artillery.

Gulf states regard the Houthis as a proxy of their arch-rival, Shiite Iran, while the Houthis say they are fighting a revolution against corrupt officials beholden to the West. The Houthis took control of the capital Sanaa a year ago. The civil war escalated in March after the coalition of Arab states intervened.

More than 4,500 people have been killed in the Arabian Peninsula country's conflict. Earlier this week, the United Nations reported a total of 95 civilian deaths in Yemen in recent weeks, adding that 53 were the result of Saudi air strikes targeting the city of Taiz. The August 21 air campaign took out 21 homes. Snipers linked to the Houthis were allegedly responsible for the remaining 42 civilian deaths.

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