Ballistic Missiles Hit a Military Camp in Southern Yemen, Killing at Least 53 Soldiers
Iran-backed Houthi rebels struck Yemeni government forces with ballistic missiles on Monday, killing at least 53 soldiers at a military camp in the southern province of Shabwa, Yemeni military officials said. The rebels acknowledged targeting the camp. The provincial government in Shabwa said an additional 200 recruits at the camp were wounded, and that the death toll is preliminary and may rise. The escalation shattered a 2022 ceasefire deal that had largely stopped fighting in Yemen's civil war.
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The training-camp strike reads less like an isolated flare-up than as evidence of reach. This is a widening front in the Iran war that began in February, and in recent weeks the Houthis have repeatedly hit Saudi Arabia's main international airport hundreds of miles away while seizing ground inside Yemen near a key shipping chokepoint. A missile that lands on a formation of recruits in Shabwa is the same story told closer to home.
Capability is being demonstrated on both sides of this line. Over the same weekend, an airstrike blamed on Saudi-led forces killed at least nine people in the rebel-held northern province of Saada, according to the Houthi-run Health Ministry — five children and two women among them, one of several attacks the rebels say killed or wounded more than 30 people in two days. Whatever the missiles say about Houthi reach, that civilian accounting belongs in the same frame.