Yemen update 1/19/2016..Yemeni army paralyzes Saudi-led forces
Yemeni army paralyzes Saudi-led forces
US Officers Killed in Yemeni Missile Attack Saudi Coalition
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13941029000403
The Yemeni army and popular forces’ missile attack on a Saudi-led command center in Ma’rib killed over 120 mercenaries, including the Saudi, UAE and US officers.
“The Yemeni army missile unit fired a Tochka missile at the operations room of the Saudi-led forces in Ma’rib (on Sunday) and killed over 120 mercenaries with different nationalities,” Ali al-Houthi, an Ansarullah Movement Leader, told FNA on Tuesday.
“46 Saudi mercenaries, 11 UAE and 9 Saudi officers and 11 foreign commanders of the US Blackwater company were among those killed in the attack,” he added.
Houthi said that 6 Apache and 4 Black Hawk helicopters and 4 drones armed with missiles were also destroyed in the attack.
The command room of communications with the spying satellites and airplanes was also destroyed completely.
Al-Houthi had also on Sunday said that the missile had hit al-Bairaq military base which hosts the headquarters of the Saudi army’s operations.
“The Tochka missile hit the target with high precision and killed tens of the Saudi-led forces, including a senior Saudi commander, who had arrived at the base just yesterday,” he said on Sunday.
Houthi added that in addition to the heavy toll, a large volume of state-of-the-art weapons and military equipment were destroyed in the attack.
He described the missile attack against the Saudi’s headquarters in Ma’rib as a major intelligence and military achievement for the Yemeni army and popular forces.
British Officer Killed in Yemen
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13941029001398
“A British officer of Blackwater security firm was killed in al-Wazaya region in Taiz province,” a Yemeni army source said on Tuesday.
The source declined to reveal any further details.
Elsewhere in Yemen, over 120 mercenaries, including the Saudi, UAE and US officers, were killed in the Yemeni troops’ missile attack on the command center of the Saudi-led coalition in Ma’rib.
Blackwater Mercenaries Killed as Saudi-Led Invasion of Yemen Spirals Into Disaster
Blackwater excelled at murdering unarmed civilians in Iraq. But in Yemen, they’re being picked off like flies
A war that you never read about (with good reason) is the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen. This is mostly because responsible media outlets are too busy reporting on Russia’s bloodless “invasion” of Crimea, and also because Saudi Arabia bombs at least one hospital or center for the blind each week. Nobody wants to embarrass a close ally with bad press, right?
One of the more appalling aspects of this completely illegal “intervention” in Yemen is that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates rely heavily upon foreign mercenaries to do the on-the-ground dirty work. The New York Times reported back in November that the UAE “hired foreign mercenaries, from a program launched by Blackwater’s head Erik Prince, and secretly sent them to the fighting in Yemen.”
Since then, western mercenaries have been killed at a fairly regular pace in Yemen — some deaths have even received mainstream coverage.
Even with billions of dollars worth of American death toys, Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen has been a miserable failure. And now even their defensive strongholds are under siege — poor mercenaries!:
On Sunday morning, the Yemeni Army’s Republican Guard – in coordination with Saleh loyalists and the Houthis – carried out a powerful assault on the Saudi Royal Army’s defensive positions at the Al-Bayrak Camp in the Mar’eb Governorate, resulting in heavy casualties and the destruction of the base’s western fortifications.
According to the Yemeni Army, their forces struck the Saudi Royal Army’s positions at the western perimeter of the Al-Bayrak Camp with a toshka missile; this caused a large explosion that resulted in the death of several soldiers form the Saudi Army, the Blackwater Group, and the Emirati Army.
Joinng Blackwater was probably a pretty good deal when you could just zoom around Baghdad as you murdered Iraqi women from the comfort of an armored SUV. Easy money. But the Yemen campaign? They have guns too, it’s not fair!
Saudi Arabia continues air campaign against Yemen
12 Yemenis killed in Saudi attacks in Ta’izz
Saudi airstrikes kill 14 Yemeni civilians
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/01/19/446385/Yemen-Luqman-counteroffensives/
New airstrikes by Saudi Arabia against Yemen have killed at least 14 civilians, mostly women and children, local media report.
Yemen’s al-Masira television channel said in a news flash that the fatalities were caused on Monday night when Saudi warplanes bombarded the Maran district in Yemen’s Sa’ada Province.
At least five people were also wounded in the raids.
Meanwhile, counteroffensives by the Yemeni army and allied forces hitting targets within Saudi Arabia have thwarted military attempts by the kingdom to advance inside Yemen, the Yemeni army says.
“Great victories are being achieved by the heroes of the army and Popular Committees within the Saudi territory,” Yemen’s army spokesman Brigadier General Sharaf Luqman told Yemen news agency (SABA) on Monday.
He said photos from the scene of clashes showed Saudi forces had suffered high losses.
“Crimes committed by Saudi Arabia against the Yemeni people and the continued and systematic destruction of Yemen’s infrastructure reflect the inability of the aggressors to make any gains on the ground,” he added.
On Monday, a military source said the Yemeni army and Houthi fighters had thwarted an attempt by Saudi mercenaries to advance on the al-Omari camp in Ta’izz Province and killed or and injured an unspecified number of them.
They also gained control of the strategic mountain of al-Kola in the Yemeni province of Ma’rib after fierce clashes with mercenaries and Saudi-backed militants, leaving a number of them dead and injured. Yemeni forces also captured five mercenaries, including an Ethiopian national, during the clashes.
Several key hills in Ma’rib were also taken by the Yemeni forces.
More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others injured since Saudi strikes began in Yemen. The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure.
Yemenis see hospitals key target of Saudi raids
Britain and Saudi Arabia Shoulder to Shoulder in Atrocities in Yemen
By Felicity Arbuthnot
“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
— Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
January 18, 2016 “Information Clearing House” – “Dissident Voice ” – Britain’s aiding and abetting of the brutal, head chopping, summarily executing, flogging regime of Saudi Arabia continues unabated.
In spite of a “Letter before action sent as a threat of legal action over arms export licences to Saudi Arabia increases …” by London law firm Leigh Day, acting on behalf of Campaign Against the Arms Trade “… challenging the government’s decision to export arms despite increasing evidence that Saudi forces are violating international humanitarian law (IHL) in Yemen …“, it transpires that UK military advisors are also “working alongside Saudi bomb targeters.”
According to the Daily Telegraph:
British military advisers are in control rooms assisting the Saudi-led coalition staging bombing raids across Yemen that have killed thousands of civilians, the Saudi Foreign Minister and the Ministry of Defence have confirmed.
Briefing the Telegraph and other journalists the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said that the UK and other countries in the control centre: “… are aware of the target lists.”
The “target list” would seem to have included five attacks on schools, disrupting the remaining shreds of normality for 6,500 children. “In some cases the schools were struck more than once, suggesting the strikes were deliberately targeted”, states a report by Amnesty International.
“In October 2015 the Science and Faith School in Beni Hushayash, Sana’a was attacked on four separate occasions within the space of a few weeks. The third strike killed three civilians and wounded more than 10 people.” The only school in the village, it provided education for 1,200 students.
In the village of Hadhran, the Kheir School: “also suffered multiple air strikes causing extensive damage, rendering it unusable.” In the same village two civilian homes and a mosque were bombed, two children were killed, their mother injured, with one man killed and another injured whilst praying in the mosque.
“The director of another school in Hodeidah city, the al-Shaymeh Education Complex for Girls, which catered for some 3,200 students described her horror after the school came under attack twice within a matter of days in August 2015 killing two people. No students were present at the school during the attack, but a man and woman were killed. (All emphases added.)
“I felt that humanity has ended. I mean, a place of learning, to be hit in this way, without warning… where is humanity …”? she asked.
The al-Asma school in Mansouriya was destroyed in a bombing in August. However, these horrors barely scrape the surface of the criminal and humanitarian outrage.
Yemen’s Ministry of Education showed Amnesty data revealing more than 1,000 schools inoperable, 254 completely destroyed, 608 partially damaged and 421 being used as shelter by those displaced by the Saudi-led, UK-assisted onslaught.
The UK is subject to the Arms Trade Treaty which entered into force on the December 24th, 2014 and which Britain has both signed and ratified (April 2nd, 2014) which prohibits arms transfers “… if they have knowledge that the arms would be used to commit attacks against civilians, civilian objects or other violations of international humanitarian law.”
Britain “have knowledge that … arms would be used … against civilians or civilian objects” – it is seemingly also helping to plan them, with the US also providing arms and “intelligence.”
The targets for which the UK surely share responsibility also include three medical facilities supported by Medecins Sans Frontieres, the latest on January 10th, a hospital in Saada in the north of the country resulting in six deaths by the January 17th, in which eight were also injured, two critically.
“This is the third severe incident affecting an MSF health facility in Yemen in the last three months. On October 27th, Haydan hospital was destroyed by an airstrike … and on 3 December a health centre in Taiz was also hit”, with nine people wounded.
The exact co-ordinates of the facilities had been given to the Saudi-led, British-advised coalition, as they had when the US bombed the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on October 3rd, 2015.
It seems giving details of humanitarian facilities to trained killers is interpreted as an invitation to become target practice.
Other potential war crimes have included destruction of the Al-Sham water bottling factory, killing thirteen workers about to head home from the night shift and “markets, apartment buildings and refugee camps … eleven people in a mosque.”
Also destroyed last September was formerly one of the country’s largest employers, the ceramics factory, where Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch stated they had found definitive proof a UK made Marconi Cruise Missile was used in the destruction.
Amnesty also stated that they had: “found evidence of apparent war crimes in connection with thirteen airstrikes around the north-eastern Saada region, which killed about one hundred civilians including fifty nine women and twenty two children.” (Guardian, November 25th, 2015.)
Some population centres are so comprehensively decimated that survivors wonder if they are finally safe, since there is nothing left to bomb. Doctor Natalie Roberts, working with MSF, told the New York Times of women giving birth in caves, feeling them the safest places.
The human cost, as ever, defies imagination:
Omar Mohammed al-Ghaily, 28, sat in the center of town, near the ruins of his clothing store … The strikes killed Seif Ahmed Seif, who owned an umbrella store. Mr. Ghaily kept Mr. Seif’s identity card, maybe to return it one day to his daughter, who lives far away in Taiz. He kept coming to the rubble, he said, because he had ‘no place to go.’
Elsewhere, when locals tried to dig the barber from the rubble of his shop: “We found only his legs.” Bombs being dropped range from 250 pounds to 2,000 pounds. Yet last September the US was: “finalizing a deal to provide more weapons to Saudi Arabia including missiles for its F-15 fighter jets”. Yemen’s population is just 24.41 million (2013 figure.)
Between March and September 2015, Britain issued thirty-seven arms export licences for arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, pointed out a correspondent to the Guardian, noting:
The UK boasts that it has ‘one of the most rigorous and transparent export control regimes in the world.’ If this really is the case, the government needs to immediately suspend all arms transfers to the conflict and launch an investigation into how these weapons have been used.
Whilst the Ministry of Defence continues its mantra of having one of: “the most robust arms export control regimes in the world”, unease is growing amongst government legal advisers, with one from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office telling the Independent (November 27th, 2015): “There are many Elizabeth Wilmshursts around here at the moment. Not all are being listened to”, referring to the senior government legal advisor to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who resigned in March 2003 because she was convinced of the illegality of the proposed attack on Iraq. She had worked with the Department since 1974.
It can only be hoped that some of the “many Elizabeth Wilmshursts” will publicly call time on David Cameron’s government’s collusion in atrocities in Yemen and that Leigh Day and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade legal initiative bears fruit. Justice for so much in the region has been long delayed. Felicity Arbuthnot
“Saudi Arabia anxious after failing in Iranophobia project”
IRGC Cmdr.: Saudis shielding Zionist regime
Crown Prince Meets Tribal Leaders Secretly to Destabilize Saudi Arabia
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13941029001367
A prominent Saudi media activist revealed that Crown Prince and Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef has held secret talks with the country’s tribal leaders to heighten internal conflicts and prevent empowerment of Mohammed bin Salman.
“After news reports said that the Saudi king has decided to leave the power to his son, the Saudi crown prince has held some meetings with the tribal leaders to destabilize domestic conditions in Saudi Arabia,” the activist who called for anonymity for security reasons told FNA on Tuesday.
Noting that the details of these meetings are not known, he said it seems that Mohammed bin Nayef sees himslef entitled to the throne, and he, thus, seeks to spark internal problems and insecurity with the help of certain tribes to stir crisis and prevent the deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman from ascending to the throne.
Reports in August had informed that the Saudi crown prince had enhanced security arrangements for fear of assassination plots of rival princes in the royal family.
“Mohammed bin Nayef has changed the venues of his daily tasks, procedures and itinerary of his visits and appointments, his team of bodyguards and their methods to decrease the danger to minimum levels,” Mujtahid, a well-known source in the royal family, wrote in his tweets.
Mujtahid is a Saudi political activist who is believed to be a member of or have a well-connected source in the royal family.
Noting that the Saudi crown prince uses helicopter flights for most of his visits to different places, he said, “Tens of armed vehicles and over 80 security forces always accompany him during his visits.”
Mujtahid said that Mohamed bin Nayef rarely stays in his palaces and uses his father’s palace on an island in the Red Sea behind fortified security measures and large numbers of security forces there.
He also spends a lot of time to eavesdrop the phone calls of the ruling family members, the Saudi activist revealed.
On April 29, King Salman relieved Muqrin of his duties as crown prince and appointed his nephew, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, as the new heir apparent.
It is the first time that a grandson of the founder of the country (Ibn Saud), rather than a son, has been appointed crown prince.
Mohamed bin Nayef, 55, the grandson of the founder of Saudi Arabia, was appointed as crown prince and also minister of interior.
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal was also replaced by Saudi Ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubair.
The changes signaled a major shift at the top of the ruling Al Saud family away from princes chosen by the late King Abdullah, who died in January, and towards those close to the new monarch.
Bahraini protesters demand release of prisoners
Western Media: Saudi Arabia Is in a State of Panic
The great Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — the long-time dictator of crude oil prices for the world — is struggling on all fronts, Business Insider said.
The Saudis are losing their proxy wars in both Syria and Yemen; their OPEC leadership is under threat; they are not winning the crude oil price war; and its long-running alliance with the West is in question, Business Insider reported.
From Saudi Arabia’s perspective, Iran seems to be gaining ground everywhere. Saudi Arabia has several weaknesses that help explain the current anxiety emanating from Riyadh.
1. Saudi Arabia losing its leadership in the OPEC
Saudi Arabia has been the default leader of OPEC; however, despite Saudi insistence to the contrary, the U.S. shale boom, increased Russian oil production, and a very resolute Iran are challenging this leadership.
The result is that Saudi Arabia now finds itself powerless in supporting oil prices. Instead of the much-needed production cuts, during the 4 December 2015 meeting, the OPEC nations refused to adhere to any ceiling, which has been the practice for years.
2. Burning through reserves — fast
Iran was waiting for the lifting of sanctions to pump more oil to improve its economy, whereas the Saudi’s are losing as they are burning through their cash reserves quickly. The above chart speaks for itself, depicting the kind of damage low oil prices are inflicting on Saudi reserves. By the most optimistic opinion, Saudi Arabia can survive low oil prices only for four years.
3. Iran has assumed a very significant leadership role among Shia Arabs
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are currently locked in a bitter proxy war on two fronts: Syria and Yemen.
Iran has the support of Hezbollah in Lebanon, along with support from the majority of Shiites in Iraq. More to the point, Iran has even managed to grow its Shiite support base among Sunni-ruled nations. The execution of Shia Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr by the Saudis is an indirect acceptance of the growing influence of Iran among the suppressed 15 percent Shiite population in Saudi Arabia. This shows that the Saudi leadership is feeling threatened on their own soil.
4. Saudi Arabia cannot defeat Iran in a direct war
Iran is a much larger nation than Saudi Arabia by population and has held its own in numerous long wars. By comparison, the Saudis have an army that is inexperienced, led by loyalists of the Royal family who occupy plum postings. These are not the war-hardened generals of Iran.
While Saudi Arabia has a nice arsenal with the latest weaponry, the kingdom is heavily dependent on the West for its use and maintenance. Its indecisive and ineffective handling of three conflict fronts — Iraq, Syria, and Yemen — give us no confidence in its ability to take on Iran.
5. Saudi Arabia knows it won’t have U.S. support for a direct war with Iran
The painfully misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are enough to deter the current U.S. administration from entering into full-fledged war in the Syrian and Yemen theaters. Washington’s non-committal stance, along with efforts to broker a deal with Iran, should serve as very loud signals to Saudi Arabia.
The message to the kingdom is this: Don’t go to war with the hope that that U.S. will support you. And without the West, Saudi Arabia knows it stands no chance of winning a war against Iran. The royal family will probably not take the risk of losing power by indulging in such a war.
These relationships are anything but clear, and everything about balance. So the U.S. will continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia to allow it to maintain a bit of balance as Washington and Tehran will continue to play cat and mouse.
This is best illustrated by the recent detainment and then quick release of U.S. sailors for an incursion into Iranian waters.
The Saudis are in a state of panic all around — from its OPEC status and dwindling reserves to its proxy wars that absolutely cannot turn into full-fledged wars and its growing friendlessness. The fact that oil fell briefly below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time in 12 years won’t have helped.
At the end of the day, Saudi Arabia has overextended itself, and overestimated its prowess and it does not have the clout that it once had to be able to do this effectively.
If you’re wondering whether there will be an all-out war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, it’s unlikely. At this point, the Saudis are likely to continue the proxy war and hope that the Iranians do something foolish to upset the nuclear deal with the West. Until then, Saudi Arabia will make a lot of noise and attempt subversive activities, but nothing more.
Source: http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.com/2016/01/yemen-update-1192016yemeni-army.html
