Yemen Shabwah(ANN)– At least seven people have been killed when Saudi-led military aircraft carried out airstrikes against a residential area in Yemen’s southern province of Shabwah as the Riyadh regime and its regional allies press ahead with their atrocious military campaign against the impoverished Arab country.

A local source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language al-Wahdah news agency that militiamen loyal to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) attacked the Markhah area on Friday, and engaged in fierce armed confrontations with scores of Sada tribesmen.

The skirmishes lasted for several hours, before an Emirati Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter fired several missiles at a number of houses in the area, killing seven people.

This file picture shows a Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter operated by the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces parked on the tarmac at the Dubai International Airport.

Later in the day, Yemeni army soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees fired eight domestically-developed Zelzal-1 (Earthquake-1) ballistic missile at the positions of Saudi troopers in Akefah military camp in the kingdom’s southern border region of Najran, killing and injuring a number of them.

Yemeni forces and their allies also launched a barrage of artillery rounds at the gatherings of Saudi-backed militiamen loyal to Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in Hamad base of the same Saudi region, leaving scores of the mercenaries killed and injured in the process.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.

According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis.

A Yemeni man wounded in a Saudi airstrike lies on a hospital bed in the northwestern city of Sa’ada on December 3, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has already said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.

A number of Western countries, the US and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.

Source: Presstv.com