KHARTOUM

As many as 30,000 Sudanese soldiers are fighting alongside the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, said deputy head of Sudan’s ruling military council.

In a public address in Abri on the outskirts of capital Khartoum, Mohamed Hamdan, deputy chairman of Transitional Military Council (TMC), said the Sudanese forces are the biggest among the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Yemen.

"Our ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE are very strong. For example, we have 30,000 fighters fighting alongside the Arab coalition," said Hamdan, who also leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.

"Some parties want to sabotage our good ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and this is unacceptable," he said, referring to opposition.

Yemen fell into civil war in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including capital Sanaa.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi gains in the impoverished country.

The ongoing violence has devastated Yemen’s basic infrastructure, prompting the UN to describe the situation as “one of the worst humanitarian disasters of modern times”.