Houthis

Yemeni rebels on Saturday targeted an airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital with a ballistic missile, according to Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Defense Ministry.

But the missile was intercepted over northeast Riyadh, the Saudi Ministry of Defense said in a statement carried on government-backed Al-Arabiya television.

US forces said they had killed dozens of so-called "Islamic State" members in a strike on training camps in Yemen's al Bayda governorate. The US has upped its number of strikes in Yemen as the civil war drags on, Deutsche Welle reported. 

Reports indicated that about 50 "Islamic State (IS) fighters were killed in two airstrikes, both manned and unmanned.

More than 5,000 civilians have been killed in Yemen since March 2015, including 1,184 children, the U.N. human rights office said on Sept. 5, renewing its calls for an international probe into the conflict.

Children were among at least nine people killed in an air strike Aug. 25 in a residential neighbourhood of Yemen's capital Sanaa, witnesses and medics said, as the United Nations called for an independent investigation into the deadly airstrikes.

After two and a half years of war, little is functioning in Yemen.

Repeated bombings have crippled bridges, hospitals and factories. Many doctors and civil servants have gone unpaid for more than a year. Malnutrition and poor sanitation have made the Middle Eastern country vulnerable to diseases that most of the world has confined to the history books.

Smugglers were pushing migrants into the sea away from the mainland for fear of government boats, amid reinforced border controls, or to avoid encountering armed groups on shore in the war-torn country, the IOM said,  according to The Independent. 

They were then going back to Africa to pick up more migrants.

More than 200 children have been killed in war-battered Yemen this year, a United Nations official said on Aug. 7.

"In 2017, 201 children killed in Yemen: 152 boys and 49 girls,"  Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Resident Representative in Yemen, said on Twitter.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on July 17 that he hopes Yemen's war will not spark direct confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia and that they can work together to end the conflict in the country and Syria. 

Iranian Air Force Grumman F-14A Tomcat - Photo: Shahram Sharifi / Wikipedia

Iran will hit back at most of Saudi Arabia with the exception of Islam's holiest places if the kingdom does anything "ignorant", Tehran's defense minister was quoted as saying on Sunday after a Saudi prince threatened to move the "battle" to Iran.

A rebel court in Yemen's insurgent-held capital has sentenced President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to death for high treason in absentia, the rebel news agency has said.

Yemen yesterday marked the second anniversary of a Saudi-led coalition starting air strikes against the Huthi rebels in support of Hadi's government, after the insurgents overran the capital Sanaa.