Yemen's health minister has warned that more than eight thousand hemodialysis patients will lose their lives if the Saudi-imposed blockade on the country persists and medical supplies run out.

Dr. Taha al-Mutawakel told Arabic-language al-Masirah television network on Tuesday that patients with chronic kidney diseases have to undergo three sessions of treatment weekly, but the crippling siege has resulted in the scarcity of dialysis solutions.

“Over the past four months, patients with renal failure were in need of a million sessions of dialysis; but we could not cover more than ten thousand sessions as we were in dire need of relevant solutions,” he pointed out.

Mutawakel further noted that Yemeni medical officials are doing their best to prevent the collapse of the health system in the crisis-hit Arab country.

Also on Tuesday, scores of Saudi-sponsored militiamen loyal to Yemen's former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi were killed and injured southwest of the al-Durayhimi district in Yemen’s western coastal province of Hudaydah, when Yemeni soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees repelled the former’s assault.

Elsewhere in the Nihm district of Sana’a province, an unspecified number of Saudi mercenaries were killed and injured when Yemeni troopers and their allies thwarted their offensive.

Yemeni forces shoot down three Saudi spy drones in Jizan

Yemeni air defense units shot down three Saudi reconnaissance drones in flight over a border area in the kingdom’s southwestern province of Jizan.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah satellite television network, citing an unnamed military source, reported that the drones were shot down over the Wadi Jarrah area on Tuesday evening.

This picture shows parts of a Saudi-led reconnaissance drone, which Yemeni soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees shot down on the Saudi side of the border on March 14, 2018. (Photo by the media bureau of Yemen’s Joint Operations Command Center)

Yemeni army forces and Popular Committees fighters also managed to establish control over two observation outposts in the same Saudi region.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of Hadi back to power and crushing the country’s popular Ansarullah movement.

Some 15,000 Yemenis have been killed and thousands more injured since the onset of the Saudi-led aggression.

More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world's worst humanitarian disaster.