Yemen’s army, backed by popular forces, hit the gathering centers of Saudi-backed mercenaries in the northwestern Hajjah Province, killing over 90 militants and injuring scores of them. Yemen’s artillery units shelled the positions of the militants in Midi Desert in Hajjah on Monday, inflicting major losses on them, a military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Saba news agency.
Separately, the hideouts of pro-Saudi militants in Karesh region in the southern province of Lahij were heavily pounded.  In addition, the Yemeni army fired mortar rounds against the positons of the militants in the areas of Khabu and Sha'af, al-Khalifatin and al-Aqabah in al-Jawf province in northwestern Yemen.
The attacks were carried out in retaliation for the regime's ongoing airstrikes targeting Yemeni civilians. Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition led by the Saudi regime for nearly 27 months 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 launching deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. Nearly 10,000 Yemenis, including 4,000 women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.
On the other hand, Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior General Hussein Arab uncovered on Friday that his ministry seized large quantities of dangerous weapons in several southern Yemeni cities, adding that extremist terrorist groups had brought and hidden those arms in a number of residential units, which were later transformed into armed caches.
The interior minister did not say where those depots were specifically located and how many people were involved in the operation. However, General Arab told reproters there were large quantities of seized weapons that could destroy vast areas.
He said the terrorists “set the target and the type of weapons that should be used If the target is a vast area, they increase the explosives to produce the highest damages.”  The interior minister said that investigations revealed the presence of several dormant cells, directly supported by rebels in Sana’a with an aim to incite security imbalance and to disrupt the Yemeni community. The Yemeni security apparatuses are ready to face those threats and would use all means to uncover the terrorists’ plots, he said.
The minister added that “employees at the Yemeni Interior Ministry launch their investigations based on available information… Accordingly, they conduct dawn raids after they verify that those given information confirm the presence of threatening weapons.”
The seizure of the arms depots comes few days after the Interior Ministry was capable to arrest several Qaeda-affiliated members and groups loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The ministry also uncovered their plans to target critical sites in areas previously liberated by the legitimate government.
Arab said the security apparatus in Yemen was coordinating with all concerned parties in neighboring countries to share information related to those terrorist groups. In mid-August, the Yemeni Interior Ministry was capable to arrest terrorist groups that were directly financed by Tehran.