Yemen: 20 Indians killed, coalition deploys ground troops

Warplanes bombed two boats carrying 20 Indian crew members as the vessels traveled between Somalia and Yemen, India's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday, a day after the Yemeni coast guard said a Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemeni rebels bombed boats off the war-torn country's coast. 

Thirteen crew members are alive and seven are missing, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said in a statement.

He said authorities are trying to gather more information. He didn't elaborate on who may have carried out the attack.

Yemeni coast guard officials said Tuesday that a Saudi-led coalition attacked more than five boats off the Yemeni coast in airstrikes, the same day the Indian boats were bombed.

Officials with the rebels, known as Houthis, said the boats were carrying fishermen and weren't connected to them. It wasn't immediately clear if the two incidents were the same. 

The conflict has killed over 2,100 civilians, according to the United Nations. 

All Yemeni officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to brief reporters. 

The Houthi-run state news agency Saba also said that 15 Yemenis were killed in airstrikes carried out on Tuesday. It was not immediately possible to independently verify the figures. 

The intensification of airstrikes comes as foreign troops continue to arrive in to Yemen to bolster the Saudi-led coalition's numbers, as it prepares, along with forces allied to the exiled Yemeni government, to assault Yemen's northern provinces, where the Houthis and their ally, ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have the most support and control.

Egyptian officials told Reuters that an unspecified number of Egyptian troops would arrive in Yemen on Tuesday and Saudi-owned Arabiya newspaper quoted sources as saying that 6,000 Sudanese troops would soon join the fight inside Yemen.

The Sudanese government did not comment on the report but it was corroborated by a source close to the Qatari military.

This comes after al-Jazeera reported the arrival of 1,000 Qatari troops to Yemen on Monday.

In Riyadh, a news agency run by Yemen's exiled government said that 10,000 loyalist troops were also preparing to take part in an advance on Sanaa.

The Saudi-led coalition launched its strikes in March against the Houthis, after President Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled to neighbouring Saudi Arabia when the Houthi-Saleh forces entered his last refuge, Yemen's second-city Aden.  

Anti-Houthi forces and Gulf soldiers took back Aden and most of Yemen's south in July, but battle lines have barely moved since as the anti-Houthi forces face stiff resistance in the Houthis' northern strongholds.

So far more than 4,500 people have died in the fighting, and international organisations have warned of a humanitarian disaster in the country.