Saudi media: Airstrike kills Houthi leaders in Yemen

Flag of Saudi Arabia (Photo by Wikimedia Commons, CC0)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A 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 early Saturday. The Shiite 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 for its information, 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 Houthi leaders met Friday to discuss Saturday’s funeral of Saleh al-Sammad, a Houthi political leader earlier killed in a Saudi airstrike.

However, Al-Masirah only reported an airstrike Friday night in Sanaa it said wounded civilians.

Yemen’s 3-year-old war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced 2 million and helped spawn a devastating cholera epidemic in the Arab world’s poorest country.

It began after the Houthis swept through Sanaa and farther south, sparking a Saudi-led military intervention on behalf of the country’s internationally recognized government.

The kingdom’s devastating air campaign repeatedly has struck markets, medical facilities and civilian targets, drawing international criticism. The coalition’s blockade on ports under Houthi control has been a main factor pushing the country into near starvation, according to United Nations agencies and rights groups.

Meanwhile, the Iranian-backed Houthis face criticism for laying mines that have killed and maimed civilians, while allegedly diverting humanitarian aid to their own cadres and conducting mass roundups of their perceived enemies.