This file picture shows Sudanese soldiers fighting alongside Saudi-backed militants loyal to former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi southwest of Hudaydah on Yemen’s southwestern coast. (Photo by AFP)

Nearly a dozen Sudanese soldiers have been killed as intense fightingbetween Saudi-led coalition forces and Takfiri militants on one side and Yemeni army troops and their allies on the other in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern region of Jizan.

Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, citing military sources, reported that Yemeni soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees are advancing in the area and have taken control of multiple locations in the al-Huthirah district.

The sources said 10 Sudanese mercenaries were killed and at least 17 others injured in fresh fighting.

Back in June 2019, then deputy chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC) General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo said in a public address that as many as 30,000 Sudanese soldiers were fighting alongside Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen.

Sudanese forces, he said, were the biggest among the Saudi-led coalition.

Yemeni forces close in on Ma’rib oil fields

Yemeni forces on Friday continued their advances east of Yemen’s strategic city of Marib, and reached the fringes of oil fields, military sources said.

They said intense clashes were underway between Saudi-backed militants loyal to former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and Yemeni armed forces on several fronts in Eastern Balaq and Eastern Sahara districts.

The sources said Yemeni troops and Popular Committees fighters had established control over al-Botr, al-Naqa’a and al-‘Akkad areas, which sit east of al-Balaq mountain range.

Locals also said fierce clashes were going on around Safar oil fields, which are under the control of Saudi mercenaries and that the exchange of gunfire has stopped operations at the fields and a nearby refinery.

Sana’a: Quartet statement on Yemen ’insignificant’

Separately, Yemeni Foreign Minister in the National Salvation Government Hisham Sharaf Abdullah dismissed a joint statement by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Britain on the Yemen conflict.

What was put out in the last Wednesday statement simply encourages the Saudi-led aggression, and portrays the aggressors as doves of peace. The statement proves to those familiar with the status quo in Yemen that members of the Saudi-led coalition are detached from realities, live in a state of delusion, have no intention to broker a ceasefire and fix their mistakes in Yemen, and do not care about the aggravating sufferings of the Yemeni nation, Abdullah said.

The top Yemeni diplomat called on the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to sit down at the negotiating table with representatives from the Sana’a government at United Nations-sponsored political talks, where delegates from Russia, China, Germany and any Persian Gulf state that does not back the Yemen war would be also in attendance.

He also reiterated Sana’a’s interest unconditional comprehensive and just peace in Yemen, which would safeguard the country’s national sovereignty and independence.

Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing Hadi’s government back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.

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.

Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s incessant bombardment of the impoverished country, the Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.