SIRWA, Yemen: A Yemeni tribesman from the Popular Resistance Committees, supporting forces loyal to Yemen’s Saudi-backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, fires a machine gun in this area west of the city of Marib yesterday. — AFP SIRWA, Yemen: A Yemeni tribesman from the Popular Resistance Committees, supporting forces loyal to Yemen’s Saudi-backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, fires a machine gun in this area west of the city of Marib yesterday. — AFP

RIYADH: A top Saudi commander and an Emirati officer were killed in Yemen yesterday during Arab coalition operations against Iran-backed rebels, the Riyadh-led alliance said. Saudi Colonel Abdullah Al-Sahyan and Emirati officer Sultan Al-Kitbi were killed at dawn yesterday "while they were carrying out their duties in supervising operations to liberate Taez" province in Yemen's southwest, the official SPA news agency said.

A Yemeni officer told AFP that both officers were killed when rebels fired a rocket at a coastal road in the strategic province, which overlooks the Bab Al-Mandab Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The rebels claimed in a statement on their sabanews.net website that they fired a Tochka missile against "a command center run by the enemy" in the Bab Al-Mandab area. The rebels claimed the attack caused "many losses in lives and military equipment," including Apache helicopters, among the Saudi-led coalition ranks. AFP could not immediately confirm these claims from other sources.

Meanwhile, SPA said Saudi Arabia has mobilized counter-insurgency units on its border with Yemen. The decision to activate the four interior ministry regiments "specializing in guerrilla warfare" comes on the eve of a possible ceasefire and United Nations-brokered peace talks in Switzerland today. "This is to support the military forces in combat when the situation demands that," SPA said, suggesting that the units would be a type of paramilitary force. "They were also given powers of security forces in seizing, arresting, searching, chasing and shooting according to the legal procedures," it said.

The coalition has been battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since March, and has provided loyalist forces with troops and equipment as well as carrying out air strikes on insurgent positions. Sahyan on Saturday met Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi who awarded him with a medal of courage, according to Yemen's official sabanew.net. He was identified as commander of the Saudi forces in provisional capital Aden, where Hadi is based. The United Arab Emirates, playing a key role in the Saudi-led coalition, confirmed the death of its officer without specifying his rank.

In early September, a similar rebel missile strike on a coalition base in Yemen's eastern Marib province killed 67 coalition soldiers, most of them Emiratis. So far at least 80 people, mostly soldiers and border guards, have been killed in Saudi Arabia because of the Yemen conflict. The UAE says it has lost almost 70 soldiers so far. Several Bahraini troops and one Qatari soldier have been killed as part of the coalition operations. In Yemen itself, the United Nations says more than 5,800 people have been killed, about half of them civilians, and more than 27,000 wounded since March. - Agencies