A Saudi woman was killed and another seven people injured on Thursday when a missile fired from Yemeni territory fell in Saudi Arabia’s southern Jazan region.
Yahya bin Abdullah al-Qahtani, Civil Defense spokesman for the Jazan region, was quoted as saying by the official Saudi Press Agency that at 09:30 this morning (6:30 GMT) civil defense teams received a report that a missile fired from Yemen’s Samtah province had landed in the area.
The missile killed a Saudi woman and injured seven other people, al-Qahtani said.
The spokesman did not speculate as to what group fired the missile, but the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia has witnessed fierce fighting following the recent collapse of a three-month-old cease-fire between the Yemeni government and the Shia Houthi group.
The latest incident comes one day after another Saudi citizen was killed — and several others injured — when missiles fired from Yemen struck the same area.
However, Saudi forces were able to intercept two ballistic missiles fired at the kingdom by Yemen’s armed Houthi militias on Wednesday.
The attack follows renewed air strikes by a Saudi-led military coalition on the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital, Sanaa. Thirteen civilians were killed when bombs a snack food factory.
The Iran-backed Houthis did not immediately claim responsibility for the missile attack. In the past, they have boasted of launching around a dozen Scud missiles at the south of the kingdom during more than a year of war.
Read more: Saudi Arabia intercepted two ballistic missiles fired by Houthis
Earlier this month, Houthi militias have launched a volley of Katyusha rockets on 4 August at a Saudi National Guard base in the kingdom’s southern Jizan region.
According to reports, a Saudi tank and several armed vehicles were destroyed in the attack.
On 3 August, two Saudi soldiers were killed in a series of retaliatory attacks by Houthi militia in Jizan, while on 2 August, artillery fire launched from Yemen killed four people and injured three more in the border region.
Earlier, seven Saudi soldiers were killed during clashes with Houthi militia — close to the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Najran. Houthi fighters routinely clash with Saudi border guards both along the frontier and inside the Saudi territory.
In late July, Saudi media reported that the Saudi authorities had evacuated a number of border villages in the Jazan region’s Al-Dayer and Samtah provinces, amid fears they could be subject to cross-border rocket fire.
In a Wednesday statement, Ahmed Asiri, a spokesman for a Saudi-led Arab coalition, accused Yemen’s Houthi militia of “resorting to targeting civilians [in Saudi Arabia] after failing to strike military targets”.
“If any attempts are made to strike targets on Saudi Arabia’s borders, the source of the attack will be identified and destroyed,” he said.
Yemen has been wracked by chaos since late 2014, when the Houthis and their allies overran Sanaa and other parts of the country, forcing President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and his Saudi-backed government to temporarily flee to Riyadh. Saudi soldiers
The Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign against Iran-backed Houthi militias in March 2015. It sides with the President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while the Houthis are aligned with ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted after Yemen revolution in 2012.
