Yemen blast kills 22 UAE troops

ABU DHABI: An arms depot explosion in Yemen has killed 22 soldiers from the United Arab Emirates, in the country’s heaviest loss since joining an Arab coalition battling rebels, military sources said on Friday.
The two sides gave conflicting accounts of the cause, with the Huthi rebels saying they carried out a rocket attack and Yemeni military sources describing it as an “accidental explosion”.
The UAE is a key partner in the Saudi-led coalition that launched air strikes against advancing Iran-backed Huthi rebels in March after they forced President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to Riyadh.
More than 4,500 people have died in the fighting, including hundreds of children, according to UN figures.
The UAE, a longtime Western ally, did not disclose the exact circumstances of its own highest casualty toll from a single incident in the six-month-old operation.
The Emirati army had previously announced at least eight deaths in Yemen among its ranks.
The arms depot blast at a military base in Safer in oil-rich Marib province, 250-km east of the capital Sanaa, also killed several Yemenis, a source at the scene said.
A thick plume of black smoke was seen billowing from the base several hours later.
According to military sources, the coalition despatched reinforcements to the base this week, including tanks, armoured vehicles, troop carriers, rocket launchers and Apache helicopters.
The extra military hardware as well as troop reinforcements aim to boost “the counter-offensive launched by loyalist forces and the coalition to advance on Sanaa”, one military official in Yemen said, asking not to be named.
The Huthis, for their part, said their forces had killed “dozens of officers and soldiers of the mercenaries in the Saudi aggression” when they fired a Tochka ballistic missile at a camp in Safer.