Death toll from major Yemeni rebel attack climbs to 111

The death toll from a missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on a government military camp climbed to at least 111 troops, a military spokesman said Monday, making it one of the deadliest rebel assaults since the beginning of the country's bloody civil war.

Ballistic missiles smashed into a mosque in the training camp in the central province of Marib over the weekend, wounding at least 68 other troops, said Abdu Abdullah Magli, spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces.

The oil-rich province of Marib is about 115 kilometers (70 miles) east of the Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa. The attack came amid a barrage of assaults by Saudi-backed government forces on rebel targets east of the capital .

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry on Monday condemned the attack, saying that “such heinous, terrorist crimes deliberately undermine the path to a political solution” in the Yemeni conflict, according the kingdom's official news agency.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia started

Yemen’s civil war erupted in 2014 when the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels seized Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, ousting the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The Saudi-led coalition launched its campaign in 2015 to drive out the Houthis and restore the government of Hadi, now exiled in Saudi Arabia.

The grinding war in the Arab world’s poorest country has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced over 3 million and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

Both sides in Yemen's war have been accused of war crimes and rampant human rights abuses. Saudi-led coalition air strikes and rebel shelling have drawn widespread international criticism for killing civilians and hitting non-military targets.