60 Newly-Recruited Mercenary Soldiers Captured in Yemen's Dhamar: Source


TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Yemeni troops and fighters from popular committees captured sixty mercenaries in Dhamar province on Monday recruited by Saudi Arabia to fight its ongoing war against the impoverished Arab country, a military source said.

The 60 mercenaries were captured in the southeastern province of Dhamar on Monday, the source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Saba news agency.

They were arrested while returning from Saudi-run training military camps, the source said, adding that the Saudi regime had lured them to fight its ongoing war against Yemen as admitted by the recruits.

A report carried by the New York Times on Friday said Saudi Arabia had recruited child soldiers from the Darfur region of Sudan to fight in its aggression.

It added that Saudi Arabia used its oil wealth to outsource the war, mainly by hiring tens of thousands of “desperate survivors of the conflict in Darfur to fight, many of them children.”

The majority of the fighters are said to belong to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, who were blamed for the systematic rape of women and girls, indiscriminate killing and other war crimes during Darfur’s conflict.

Sudanese militias are commanded by Saudi and Emirati military officials “via remote control,” as they want to keep a safe distance from the front, the bombshell report said.

One unnamed soldier who fought near Hudaydah said Saudis and Emiratis “treat the Sudanese like their firewood.”

Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition for more than three-and-a-half years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

The UN has recently brokered a ceasefire in Yemen but the Saudi-led coalition has continuously violated the ongoing truce.