Yemeni forces have targeted and destroyed an Emirati military vessel in a rocket attack near the Red Sea port city of Mokha, al-Masirah TV says.

A military source said Ansarullah fighters and allied army forces launched rockets at an HSV-2 Swift hybrid catamaran operated by the Emirati navy off the shores of the Red Sea port city of Mokha early on Saturday, al-Masirah television reported.

The catamaran was reportedly a high-speed logistical ship capable of locating mines, controlling military operations and transporting troops and equipment. The vessel formerly belonged to the US navy, al-Masirah said.

Ansarullah fighters working in cooperation with the Yemeni army have so far destroyed several hostile warships and boats.

On October 10, 2015, Yemeni army forces destroyed a Saudi warship in a missile attack in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. That development came only three days after Yemeni forces managed to destroy another Saudi vessel in the area.

Emirati casualties

The United Arab Emirates has been suffering heavy casualties in Yemen, where Ansarullah fighters and allied military units have been fighting back the Saudi-led invaders.

On Jun 13, an Emirati military helicopter crashed near the al-Buraiqeh coast of the southern Yemeni port city of Aden, killing its two pilots.

Yemeni boys hold a part of an Emirati Mirage warplane that crashed in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, March 14, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)

On March 14, two Emirati pilots died when their Mirage fighter jet crashed while conducting military operations in the same Yemeni district.

A senior Emirati military commander and three Saudi-backed foreign mercenaries had been killed in an attack by Yemeni forces in the Dhubab district of the southwestern province of Ta’izz two months earlier.

The biggest casualties, however, came last September, when the UAE confirmed that at least 52 of its soldiers had been killed in a barrage of missiles fired by Yemeni forces at Saudi-led foreign troopers in the central Ma’rib Province. At least 70 soldiers were also injured in the missile attack.

The official Saudi Press Agency, meanwhile, reported the death of one of its border guards, who was killed after a mortar shell fell on the southwestern border region of Jizan in Saudi Arabia from the direction of Yemen on Thursday.

In a separate development, a massive bombing reportedly targeted the Craiter district in the southwestern Yemeni province of Aden, killing two people and injuring three others.