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Yemen’s army with backing by the Popular Committees loyal to the Ansarullah movement, targeted a sixth Saudi warship in the Gulf of Aden waters near the southwestern province of Ta’izz. The attacks come in response to Saudi’s unending coalition airstrike bombardment of Yemen, since March 2015.

The Yemeni news site al-Masirah reports that the Saudi military vessel was hit by a missile on the morning of Saturday, 5 December while near the coast.

Since the fighting began earlier this year, six Saudi and allied warships from the capital of Riyadh have been destroyed by Ansarullah forces.

The attack came after the ship had been firing rockets relentlessly on Ta’izz, causing high numbers of casualties and destruction.

Over 7,000 civilians have been killed since Saudi began its coalition airstrikes on Yemen.

Yemenis destroyed the first Saudi warship off the same coast as Saturday’s attack in October, in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

In addition to a relentless bombing campaign, Saudi warships have maintained a blockade on Yemen’s coast for months, effectively keeping food and aid supply from reaching the desperately suffering Yemeni citizens. Yemen is the poorest nation of the Arabian Peninsula, and the war has exacerbated the already burgeoning human rights crisis in the country.

Yemeni forces have been making gains elsewhere, however, including in the northern province of Jawf, which borders Saudi Arabia to the south. Ansarullah forces killed dozens of Saudi-led foreign forces operating inside the country. Some Saudi military commanders were also among the killed.

Saudi warplanes have continued their bombing campaigns of Sa’ada, Ta’izz and Ma’rib, as they have continuously since fighting began. These are mostly civilian areas, yet numbers of casualties were not immediately available.

In addition to the approximately 7,000 Yemenis killed since the fighting began, approximately 14,000 have been injured by airstrikes and countless more displaced. The UN has called the situation in Yemen a major humanitarian crisis.

UN numbers show that since 2014, 33% more Yemenis are in need of humanitarian aid—some 21 million out of the 26 million person population. And nearly half of Yemenis are considered food insecure by international standards.

After a recent visit, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer, declared: "Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years."