14 Sudan soldiers killed in Houthi attack in Yemen

Yemeni military sources have announced the deaths of fourteen Sudanese soldiers after an attack launched on Thursday by Houthis against locations affiliated with the Arab Coalition. The attack took place within the Harad District in the Hajjah Governorate near the Saudi border.

Sudan has been a member of the Arab Coalition led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen since 2015 to support the government face rebels close to Iran. The two parties are involved in a bloody war that plunged the country into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

Since their takeover of Sana’a in 2014, rebels control the largest part of northern Yemen, despite the coalition’s support for Yemeni government forces.

Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, sent tens of thousands of soldiers, especially those of Janjaweed origin – the former militias accused of atrocities in the Darfur region.

At the end of 2019, the Sudanese Transitional Government, emanating from the Sudanese Revolution, announced that the number of soldiers operating in Yemen had been reduced from fifteen thousand at the beginning of the conflict to five thousand.

READ: Who is fighting in Yemen’s war?

In January 2020, dozens of Sudanese demonstrated in Khartoum to demand the return of their relatives, who they allege were recruited by an Emirati company to be sent to Yemen and Libya to fight.

The United Nations estimated that by the end of this year, the war in Yemen would have killed 377,000 people after seven years of war, including 227,000 due to indirect causes of conflict, such as freshwater shortages, hunger and disease.

War has also led to the displacement of millions of people. More than 80 per cent of the population of about 30 million rely on international assistance.