Over the past six years, Saudi Arabia and its allies have – not always accurately – dropped western-built munitions worth billions of pounds on both military and civilian targets in Yemen. On Monday, the Houthis, the Zaidi militia they are fighting, hit back.
The Houthis claimed to have struck a number of targets in the UAE – including a petroleum storage facility and Abu Dhabi airport – with a mix of drones and missiles, all probably Iranian-built and therefore cheap as chips. In a stroke of nominative indeterminism, the Saudi-led campaign was initially called ‘Storm of Decisiveness’. The Houthis rather more soberly named their latest attack ‘Hurricane of Yemen’.
It’s hard to say with any confidence how many people have died as a direct result of air strikes by the Saudis and their allies – anywhere from 20,000 upwards. Three South Asian workers are reported to have died as a result of the Houthi attack.
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