News Digest

UAE, Bahrain lose 50 troops on deadliest day for Gulf in Yemen conflict

At least 50 soldiers from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were killed in Yemen on Friday in the deadliest attack on Gulf Arab troops in the Saudi-led military campaign against Shiite rebel Houthi forces, Gulf news agencies said. The incident took place in the oil-producing Marib area of central Yemen near the border with Saudi Arabia, apparently when Houthi rocket fire hit a weapons store at a military camp.

A rocket and an explosion at a weapons cache has targeted the martyrs.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash on Twitter.

Saudi Arabia and a coalition of other Sunni Muslim Arab states intervened in Yemen’s conflict in March to restore the exiled government and drive back the Iran-allied Houthis, who seized the capital Sanaa in September last year then took over much of the country. The deaths pointed to the increasingly prominent role of the Emirates on the ground in Yemen’s war — both in troops and hardware — though the government has never made clear the full extent of their role or the numbers of troops involved.