Yemeni soldier kills 2 Saudi troops in rare insider attack amid US strikes

A soldier for Yemen’s exiled government opened fire on Saudi troops as they exercised in eastern Yemen, killing two of them and wounding another in a rare insider attack during the kingdom’s nearly decade-long war there, officials said on Saturday.

The assault in eastern Hadramawt province comes as a ceasefire between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi rebels has held despite the militants’ continuing attacks against shipping in the Red Sea corridor. While the Houthis did not claim the attack, at least one Houthi official praised it as being “the beginning and an indication of a harsh future awaiting the invaders”.

Meanwhile, US warplanes carried out new strikes targeting Houthi positions that lasted into early Sunday morning, the American military said. The strikes come after the militants probably shot down yet another American reconnaissance drone over the country.

The attack on the Saudi troops took place on Friday night in Seiyun, a city some 500km (310 miles) east of Sanaa. As troops worked out at a Saudi-led base there, the soldier opened fire, killing an officer and a noncommissioned officer, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said, citing a military statement.

“The Joint Forces Command underscores that this ‘Lone Wolf’ cowardly attack does not represent the honourable members of the Yemeni Ministry of Defence,” the statement added. The dead and the other wounded Saudi solider have been brought back to the kingdom, it added.

Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the leader of Yemen’s separatist Southern Transitional Council, identified the soldier who carried out the attack as belonging to the First Military Region, which is based in Seiyun.