Several killed in Saudi Arabia,Yemen in coalition, rebel attacks
RIYADH: DEC. 25 – Three people have been killed in Yemen in an air raid by a Riyadh-led coalition while two were killed in Saudi Arabia in a projectile attack blamed on Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Since 2014, Yemen has been racked by a civil war pitting Iran-backed Houthi rebels against the internationally recognized government, which is supported by the Saudi-led military coalition.
Saudi Arabia’s civil defense said on Saturday that two people, a Saudi and a Yemeni, were killed and seven others wounded in a projectile attack on Jazan, a southern region of the kingdom, bordering Yemen.
“A military projectile fell on a commercial store on the main street, resulting in two deaths,” it said in a statement, adding that seven others were wounded. In Yemen, medics said three people were killed and six others were injured in the coalition air raids in Ajama, a town northwest of the rebel-held capital Sanaa.
“Three civilians including a child and a woman were killed, and six others were wounded,” medics told the AFP news agency. The fatal cross-border attack marks an escalation in Yemen’s long-running civil war.
Saudi-led military coalition air raids targeted Sanaa earlier on Friday, hitting a military camp near the city centre, Saudi media reported. Houthi media said the attacks had hit a populated neighborhood, damaging homes.
Military escalation
Yemen’s war erupted in 2014 when the Houthis seized Sanaa and much of the country’s north. Months later, the US-backed Saudi-led coalition intervened to overthrow the Houthis and restore the internationally recognized government.
The war has settled into a stalemate and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Throughout the conflict, the Houthis have increasingly staged drone attacks and fired missiles across the border at airports, oil facilities and military installations within the kingdom.
Within Yemen, the coalition bombing campaign has drawn international criticism for hitting non-military targets such as hospitals and wedding parties in the Arab world’s most impoverished nation. Yemen’s civil war has killed some 130,000 people, including thousands of civilians.
