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U.S. Special Forces Secretly Help Saudis Combat Threat from Yemen Rebels

(New York Times) Helene Cooper - In December 2017, a team of about a dozen Green Berets arrived on Saudi Arabia's border with Yemen - weeks after a ballistic missile fired from Yemen sailed close to the Saudi capital, Riyadh - to help locate and destroy caches of ballistic missiles and launch sites that Houthi rebels in Yemen are using to attack Saudi cities. U.S. officials said the American commandos are training Saudi ground troops to secure their border. They also are working closely with American intelligence analysts in Najran in southern Saudi Arabia to track the Houthi weapons and their launch sites with the aid of American surveillance planes. On April 17, Robert S. Karem, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S. had about 50 military personnel in Saudi Arabia, "largely helping on the ballistic missile threat." Since 2015, Houthi rebels have launched more than 100 ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia, Karem said.
2018-05-04 00:00:00
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