Artillery fire from Yemen kills 2 in Saudi Arabia

Saudi border cities have come under fire since Riyadh launched massive air campaign against Yemen’s Shia Houthi militia last year

Artillery fire from Yemen kills 2 in Saudi Arabia

A Saudi soldier and one civilian have been killed by cross-border shelling from war-torn Yemen, according to Saudi Arabia’s official news agency. 

Late Saturday, the Saudi Press Agency quoted an Interior Ministry spokesman as saying that one soldier had been killed when an artillery shell -- fired from Yemeni territory -- struck a border patrol in the kingdom’s eastern city of Dhahran. 

On the same day, Saudi civil defense authorities tweeted that a foreign resident of the country had also been killed when a shell fired from Yemen struck the southwestern city of Najran. 

Border cities in southern Saudi Arabia have come under fire from Yemen since Riyadh and its Arab allies began a massive air campaign aimed at driving the Shia Houthi militia from Yemeni capital Sanaa, which it captured in late 2014. 

According to the UN, more than 5,800 people have been killed in Yemen -- about half of them civilians -- since the Saudi-led coalition first began its air campaign in March of last year.