Soldier with Yemen's exiled government opens fire, killing 2 Saudi troops and wounding another

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — 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 decadelong war there, officials said Saturday.

The assault in eastern Hadramawt province comes as a yearslong cease-fire between Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Houthi rebels largely has held despite the militants' ongoing 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, U.S. warplanes carried out new strikes targeting Houthi positions that lasted into early Sunday morning, the American military said. The strikes come after the militants likely shot down yet-another American reconnaissance drone over the country.

The attack on the Saudi troops took place Friday night in Seiyun, a city some 500 kilometers (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 honorable members of the Yemeni Ministry of Defense,” 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 successionist Southern Transitional Council, identified the soldier who carried out the attack as belonging to the First Military Region, which is based out of Seiyun.

Police in the area published pictures of the soldier, saying there was a 30-million-Yemeni-rial reward for information leading to the soldier's arrest. That's worth around $15,000 on the black market.

Authorities offered no motive for the attack. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the militant group's Yemen branch, long has operated around Hadramawt. However, the group did not immediately claim the attack. A recent United Nations expert report has said that the al-Qaida group and the Houthis have begun to “coordinate operations directly with each other."

The Houthis meanwhile did not claim the attack either. However, Houthi official Hamid Rizq praised the attack in a message on the social platform X, claiming it came from “the feeling of oppression” over Saudi troops being stationed in the area.

“The heroic operation is the beginning and an indication of a harsh future awaiting the invaders,” Rizq wrote.

Yemen has been mired in a decadelong war since the Houthis swept into Sanaa from their northern strongholds in September 2014. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war on behalf of Yemen's exiled government in 2015. The war further internationalized, with Iran backing the Houthis with weapons and support that cemented the conflict into a yearslong stalemate.

The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more. A cease-fire that expired in October 2022 largely has held in the time since, however, even as the Houthis have seized on the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

On Saturday night, Houthi-run media reported U.S. airstrikes targeting areas around Sanaa. The airstrikes continued into Sunday morning and also included sites in Amran province just outside of the capital, the Houthis said. The rebels offered no immediate damage assessment from the strikes.

The U.S. military later told The Associated Press on Sunday it conducted airstrikes “on numerous Iran-backed Houthi weapons storage facilities within Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.” It described the sites as housing advanced conventional weapons used to target military and civilian ships in the Red Sea corridor, but offered no other immediate details.

The U.S. military has targeted radar stations, military bases and drone and missile launch sites since beginning its ongoing airstrike campaign against the Houthis in January.

Meanwhile, Iran’s state TV on Sunday reported that chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, met his Saudi counterpart, Gen. Fayyad bin Hamid Al-Ruwaili, in Tehran — the latest sign of warming ties between the two regional rivals.

It reported that Al-Ruwaili arrived in Tehran earlier in the day, leading a high-ranking delegation of Saudi Arabian military officials, and that the development of defense diplomacy and expansion of bilateral cooperation were key topics of discussion during the meeting.

Iran and Saudi Arabia resumed full diplomatic relations in 2023 after seven years, facilitated by China’s mediation.