Alwaght- Yemeni forces launched retaliatory strikes against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, only a week after they carried out a series of attacks against the UAE in retaliation for its involvement in the devastating Saudi-led war on Yemen.
The UAE defense ministry, in a statement published on the official Emirates News Agency WAM, claimed its air defense systems had intercepted and destroyed two ballistic missiles fired by Yemeni forces early on Monday.
“The remnants of the intercepted ballistic missiles fell in separate areas around Abu Dhabi,” the ministry added, noting that it was taking the necessary protective measures against such attacks.
Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported that the Yemeni armed forces will announce within hours the details of a “wide military operation” deep inside Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Sabereen News, a Telegram news channel associated with Iraqi anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), released the purported video footage of the Yemeni retaliatory missile strike against Abu Dhabi.
It said four large explosions were heard at the time of the attack, and sirens went off shortly afterward.
According to Sabereen News, the retaliatory Yemeni missile strike has brought air traffic at Abu Dhabi International Airport to a halt.
Separately, the state-run Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said late on Sunday that a ballistic missile, fired by Yemeni armed forces, had fallen in the kingdom’s southern region of Jizan, injuring two foreigners and damaging workshops and vehicles in an industrial area.
The Saudi-led coalition asserted in a statement that it had intercepted and destroyed two drones that had flown from the northern Yemeni province of Jawf.
Riyadh has lately ramped up its airstrikes against various regions across Yemen.
At least 90 people were killed when a Saudi strike hit a detention center in the northern province of Sa’ada on Friday, and nearly two dozen were killed in the capital of Sana’a in an operation on Tuesday.
On Friday night, the spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces called on foreign companies to pull out of the UAE following a series of retaliatory strikes against the Persian Gulf country.
“In the aftermath of the crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition of aggression against Yemeni people, we advise foreign companies in the Emirates to leave because they have invested in an unsafe country,” Yahya Saree said in a statement posted on his Twitter page on Friday night.
He added, “The UAE would grow more insecure as long as its rulers continue their military aggression against Yemen.”
Yemeni forces carried out retaliatory airstrikes against strategic facilities deep inside the UAE on January 17, using domestically-manufactured combat drones and ballistic missiles.
The Abu Dhabi police, in a statement published on the official Emirates News Agency WAM, said three fuel tanker trucks had exploded in the industrial Musaffah area, near storage facilities of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and that a fire had also broken out at a construction site at Abu Dhabi International Airport.
At least three people have been killed and six others wounded in the suspected drone attack, according to Emirati authorities.
Police identified the dead as two Indian nationals and one Pakistani. It did not identify the wounded, who it said suffered minor or moderate wounds.
Saudi Arabia launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, leading a military campaign consisting of its regional allies, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Through its war, Riyadh sought to dismantle the popular Ansarullah movement and regain Yemen as its pawn by reinstalling former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
The kingdom estimated at the beginning of the war that it would come out victorious within just a few weeks.
However, the war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
