Saudi-led airstrike targeting a high-level meeting of Shiite rebels in Yemen’s capital killed two of the group’s leaders and dozens of their militiamen, the kingdom’s state media reported on Saturday. The Shia rebels known as Houthis did not immediately acknowledge the strike.
Saudi state-run television offered the report, saying the strike Friday killed more than 50 militiamen, including the two leaders. It did not elaborate. That dispatch followed a far more detailed report on the strike by Al-Arabiya, a Dubai-based satellite news network now believed to be majority-owned by Saudi Arabia.
Al-Arabiya, without offering a source, said the strike hit a building belonging to Yemen’s Interior Ministry in the country’s rebel-held capital, Sanaa. It said more than 38 Houthi fighters including the two leaders were killed in the strike targeting a high-level meeting.
Al-Masirah, a Houthi-run satellite news channel, acknowledged that Houthi leaders met Friday to discuss Saturday’s funeral of Saleh al-Samad, a Houthi political leader killed over a week ago in a Saudi airstrike on the coastal city of Hodeida. However, the only airstrike Friday night in Sanaa the outlet reported on involved wounded civilians.
later, Al-Masirah reported that Houthi forces fired eight ballistic missiles at “economic and vital” targets in Saudi Arabia’s southern city of Jizan and hit the targets with “high accuracy.” The Saudi-led coalition said in statement, carried by state news agency SPA, that the kingdom’s air defense forces intercepted four of the missiles fired toward Jizan.
Houthis held al-Samad’s funeral, bringing together thousands of Yemenis in Sabeen square to pay tribute to slain head of rebels’ Supreme Political Council, which runs rebel-held areas in Yemen. Top Houthi officials, including al-Samad’s successor Mahdi al-Mashat, a former Houthi fighter, attended.