Fighting between Yemen's Houthis and government forces continued Tuesday, with the Houthis reporting civilian causalities after trading fresh strikes with the Saudi-led coalition.
Yemen's government forces said Tuesday they had carried out 744 strikes against Houthi military targets across several battlefronts over the past 24 hours.
Majid Al-Nuzaili, spokesperson for the government forces, said in a statement that the attacks involved air and ground operations targeting Houthi command-and-control centers, firing positions, troop concentrations, reinforcements and supply lines.
Also on Tuesday, spokesman of the Saudi-led coalition Turki Al-Maliki said coalition forces had intercepted a drone over the Saudi capital Riyadh. The announcement came hours after the coalition said it had intercepted a ballistic missile launched by the Houthi group toward Riyadh.
Two loud explosions were heard in Riyadh on Tuesday morning, while local residents received alerts through mobile phone applications. No casualties or damage were reported.
Al-Maliki said in a separate statement later Tuesday that coalition forces had destroyed the launch platform used by the Houthis to fire the ballistic missile toward Riyadh earlier in the day, without disclosing the platform's location.
The Houthis, for their part, said Tuesday that Saudi forces carried out 93 air and missile strikes across eight Yemeni provinces over the past 24 hours.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said the latest attacks brought the total number of Saudi air and missile strikes since the current escalation began to 2,793. The figures could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported that eight fishermen were killed on Tuesday in strikes on two fishing boats off the coast of Dhubsab district in southwestern Taiz province.
Citing a local source, the report said the first strike hit fishermen aboard one boat, and a second hit survivors trying to escape aboard another fishing boat.
There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia on the Houthi claims.
Yemen has been mired in conflict since late 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and much of the country's north. A Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 in support of the internationally recognized Yemeni government.
Fighting rages in Yemen as gov't forces push back, Houthis claim civilian casualties
