Houthis blamed as Najran attack injures civilians after Yemen troop deaths

Cairo,UPDATED: Aug 7, 2026 06:38 IST

More than 10 civilians, including a four-year-old child, were injured in Saudi Arabia on Thursday after a series of attacks blamed on Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the Saudi military said. The strikes in the southern Najran region, near the Yemeni border, came hours after the Iran-backed Houthis said they had carried out another wave of attacks in central and eastern Yemen that killed at least 30 government troops and wounded at least 50 others.

The back-to-back attacks mark a major escalation since a de facto truce in Yemen in April 2022 halted major fighting between the Houthis and a Saudi-led coalition backing the internationally recognised government. While Saudi Arabia reported civilian casualties in Najran, Houthi officials said their earlier attacks had targeted Saudi-backed forces in Yemen.

Turki al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi military, said the attack in Najran wounded seven Saudi nationals, one Yemeni, two Egyptians and one Pakistani expatriate. The Houthis did not issue any statement on the Najran attack. In a post on X, al-Malki said, "The terrorist Houthi militia carried out these terrorist attacks using indiscriminate shelling against civilian objects, which is a flagrant violation of the Customary Humanitarian Law through deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian objects."

Earlier, Yemeni officials said attacks had struck camps of forces loyal to the internationally recognised government in Marib and Hadramout provinces. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media, said at least 30 troops were killed and at least 50 others were wounded. Yemen’s army later said only that the attacks had left dead and wounded among its troops, without giving a toll.

Houthi Brig Gen Yahya Saree said the attacks on the camps in Marib and Hadramout were carried out with ballistic missiles and drones and were a response to what he described as a build-up of Saudi-backed forces in eastern Yemen. He said the strikes killed and injured "hundreds of Saudi enemy mercenaries" and destroyed and burned camps, depots, military vehicles and weapons. In his address, Saree said, "We call upon all our people to remain vigilant and confront any Saudi aggression, and to strike Saudi troop concentrations wherever they may be."

The US mission to Yemen expressed condolences to the families of the Yemeni soldiers killed in Hadramout and Marib, and said on X that the Houthi attacks "represent yet another example of their terrorism against the Yemeni people."

Yemen has been engulfed in civil war since 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognised government into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition entered the conflict in 2015 to try to restore the government, but the war has since turned into a prolonged proxy conflict with neither side prevailing. The Houthis say their recent escalation, including what they describe as a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is in response to the Kingdom’s air and sea blockade on Yemen since 2015.

Thursday’s attacks in Saudi Arabia and Yemen underlined a fresh rise in hostilities, with civilian casualties reported in Najran and heavy losses reported among government forces in Marib and Hadramout.

With PTI Inputs

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