Five Sudanese troops killed in Yemen: army

An officer and five Sudanese soldiers were killed while fighting for the Saudi-led Arab coalition against Houthi rebels in Yemen, Khartoum's military said on Tuesday.

Hundreds of soldiers were deployed to Yemen as part of the coalition that is fighting the rebels, but Sudan's army did not specify when the troops were killed.

"We have lost five martyrs including an officer, and 22 others have been wounded," army spokesman Brigadier Ahmed Khalifa al-Shami said in a statement.

Without offering details, he said Sudanese forces had completed their "first stage of duty" in Yemen on Tuesday, and were now preparing to launch the second stage.

"Our troops in Yemen have captured all the areas targeted in the first stage, inflicted big losses on the enemy and are holding many prisoners of war," Khalifa said.

Khartoum joined the Sunni coalition led by Saudi Arabia in 2015 after breaking decades-old ties with Tehran, but it has largely refrained from offering details of its operations, including casualties it has suffered, in the conflict so far.

In January 2016 the army had said it had lost one soldier in Yemen.

The Saudi-led coalition also comprises the Gulf monarchies Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates along with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan.

According to the UN, the fighting has displaced more than three million people, and more than two thirds of Yemen's population of around 18.8 million people need aid.

Some 7.3 million people are estimated to be close to starvation and 462,000 children suffer from serious malnutrition.

Without $2.1 billion in international aid, the UN warns that Yemen will suffer a famine in 2017.

More than 10,000 have been killed since the conflict escalated when the Arab coalition intervened to back the internationally recognised government in March 2015.