Saudi-led planes hit Houthi buildings; Yemen missile strike also kills 10 Saudi troops
DUBAI, Sept 5 : The UAE bombarded Yemeni rebels with air strikes on Saturday as it mourned 45 soldiers, among 50 killed in the deadliest day yet for a Saudi-led coalition fighting the insurgents.
Emirati officials vowed that the deaths in a missile attack in the battleground eastern oil province of Marib would not sap their commitment to the coalition's mission to restore exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
The missile hit an arms depot, triggering huge explosions that the exiled government said also killed five Bahraini coalition troops.
The UAE denounced the attack as "cowardly" but the Shiite Houthi rebels hailed it as "revenge" for six months of deadly coalition air strikes.
The coalition launched its air war when Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia in March after the rebels entered his last refuge, Yemen's second city Aden.
After his loyalists recaptured the southern port city in July, the coalition launched a ground operation which has seen the rebels pushed back from five southern provinces, although they still control the capital Sanaa and much of the north and centre.
UAE troops have played a leading role in the operation and seven had already been killed in the fighting.
But Friday's losses were the heaviest since the formation of the United Arab Emirates in 1971 and, as the bodies of the dead were flown home on Saturday, the country began three days of national mourning.
UAE warplanes retaliated with pre-dawn bombing raids against the rebels in Marib and Sanaa as well as their stronghold of Saada in the far north and the central city of Ibb, state media reported.
Meanwhile, Saudi-led coalition warplanes struck government buildings controlled by Houthi fighters in the Yemeni capital Sanaa overnight and army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh after at least 50 coalition soldiers were killed on Friday.
Among the targets, the Defence Ministry building in Sanaa was very heavily damaged, residents said. Strikes hit the command of the special security forces and camps of Saleh as well as the presidential complex.
Ten Saudi soldiers were killed in the missile strike in Yemen that also left 45 Emirati soldiers dead, Saudi media said Saturday, in the kingdom's first losses inside the country.    ?Agencies