Rabat - Seven Moroccan soldiers were reportedly killed on Sunday night along with Saudi soldiers in a rocket strike in Yemen as fighting flared before Tuesday's peace talks.
According to Albawaba, the attack left nearly 150 casualties among the Saudi-led forces.
“The Yemeni army, backed by popular committees loyal to the Houthi rebel movement, targeted a Saudi military headquarters in the Yemen’s southwestern province of Ta’izz with a Tochka ballistic missile on Sunday night,” Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah news website reported.
The Tochka rocket strike on a Red Sea army camp south-west of the besieged city of Taiz appears to be “one of the bloodiest setbacks for Gulf forces” after months of fighting against Iran-allied Houthi forces and Yemeni army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Moroccan authorities have not confirmed the death of the soldiers. The number of confirmed death on the Moroccan side is still not clear. Citing Asset Source, a mobile intelligence and monitoring company, the International Business Times reported that 9 Moroccan soldiers were reportedly killed in the attack, in addition to 16 and 18 Sudanese, 23 Saudi, seven Emiratis.
The tragedy comes only one day after a seven-day renewable ceasefire is scheduled to come into effect.
The seven Moroccan soldiers killed in the Houthi attack are the second loss of Morocco in its participation in the Saudi-led coalition, after Lieutenant Yassine Bahti died when his F16 plane crashed in Yemen on May 10.
The Iran-backed Houthi group had claimed responsibility for the “downing” of the Moroccan F-16 warplane in the Saada region in the north of Yemen.
Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition in a military campaign from late March to stop the Iran-backed Houthi militias.
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