South Front Crisis News 26 May 2015: Yemeni troops destroy tanks in Saudi Arabia, fighting continues in Palmyra, Syria

    

The Yemeni army, backed by popular committee forces, has destroyed four Saudi battle tanks after storming a base in Saudi Arabia's southwestern city of Jizan. Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah satellite television network reported the development late on Monday. It also reported that the Yemeni army targeted three Saudi vehicles in the southwestern Saudi city of Najran, which is located near the border with Yemen, with rockets and artillery shells. Meanwhile, at least six people were killed and a woman sustained injuries in the US-backed Saudi airstrikes on a village in the district of Harad in Yemen's western province of Hajjah early on Tuesday. We remember, Saudi Arabia is continuing its US-backed military aggression against Yemen since March 26, 2015.

The Syrian army has launched a major offensive against the ISIL Takfiri terrorists who recently overran the city of Palmyra in central Homs province. According to the military sources, the air force struck more than 160 Islamic State's targets, killing and wounding terrorists and destroying weapons and vehicles equipped with machine-guns. Moreover, various military operations are also being carried out in the areas around the al-Suknah, the Arak, and al-Hail gas fields and all the roads leading to Palmyra. Over 50 ISIS militants have been killed during the offensive aimed at regaining the city from terrorists' control, the Syrian state television reported.

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Moscow has condemned the massacre of civilians in the city of Palmyra, urging the international community to denounce double standards in its approach to fighting terrorists, and unite against Islamic State aggression. "Once again, we urge international and regional parties to abandon the vicious practice of using double standard approaches to fighting against terrorism, and launch efficient cooperation with the governments of Middle East countries, which are directly repelling the ISIS offensive," the ministry said in a statement. Moscow believes that US-led airstrike campaign against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria have not done enough to impede the jihadists' advance in the two Middle Eastern states.

Monitors of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have confirmed that Russian representatives at the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination came under fire in Donbas on May 23. "The Russian Federation Armed Forces Colonel-General said to the SMM that, on 23 May, his vehicle had come under AK47 fire. All passengers escaped unharmed but the vehicle suffered considerable damage and was abandoned on site," the Monday's SMM daily update reads. On Sunday, spokesman for the defense ministry of the DPR Eduard Basurin told a briefing that a group of JCCC monitors had been attacked by Ukrainian subversives on May 23.