Yemen’s Houthis claim to kill 7 Saudi troops

By Zakaria al-Kamaali and Mohamed al-Shubeiry

SANAA (AA) – The Houthi Shia militia killed seven Saudi troops on the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the Houthi-run SABA news agency reported Tuesday.

The news agency quoted a Houthi source as saying that the militia’s snipers had killed seven Saudi troops, including five in Jabal al-Dukhan in the kingdom’s south.

While the assertion has yet to be confirmed by official Saudi sources, it came only a few hours after Riyadh announced that four civilians had been killed in the Saudi town of Samtah by projectiles fired from Yemen.

Military conflict erupted between Saudi Arabia and Yemen earlier this month following the collapse of a fragile ceasefire.

Yemen has been racked by chaos since late 2014, when the Houthis and their allies overran capital Sanaa and other parts of the country, forcing President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and his Saudi-backed government to temporarily flee to Riyadh.

In March of last year, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive military campaign in Yemen aimed at reversing Houthi gains and restoring Hadi’s embattled government.

Backed by Saudi-led airstrikes, pro-Hadi forces have since managed to reclaim large swathes of the country’s south -- including provisional capital Aden -- but have failed to retake Sanaa and other strategic areas.

In April, the Yemeni government and the Houthis entered into UN-sponsored peace talks aimed at resolving the conflict, which has so far killed more than 6,400 people and forced 2.5 million others to flee their homes.

On Sunday, however, the talks broke down due to repeated violations of a fragile ceasefire agreement, especially in and around Yemen's central Taiz province.