Shell kills Saudi soldier on Yemen border

A Saudi Arabian soldier has been killed in shelling on the border with Yemen, the military said late Wednesday, adding to a rising toll in the kingdom’s south over the past week.

“He was hit by a projectile in the sector of Jazan,” a Saudi border district, said a statement from the Saudi-led coalition which has been bombing rebels in Yemen for more than four months in support of exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

On Sunday a civilian died when a shell from Yemen hit his house in Najran, another area along the Saudi border.

And last Friday rocket fire from Yemen killed three soldiers and a paramilitary along the frontier, in the deadliest such incident for several weeks.

The cross-border barrages coincide with advances since late July by anti-rebel fighters who recaptured the southern city of Aden from the Iran-backed Houthi militia group.

On Tuesday they also took back the Al-Anad airbase north of Aden, using heavy armor supplied by the coalition after hundreds of Gulf Arab troops landed in the port city to bolster the fightback by local forces opposed rebel groups.

The Saudi soldier brings the number of people killed in shelling and skirmishes along the Saudi frontier with Yemen to at least 50 since the coalition campaign began on March 26.

Most of the casualties have been soldiers.

In Yemen, the United Nations says the war has killed nearly 4,000 people, half of them civilians.