Houthi fighters set up a checkpoint in the Khor Maksar neighbourhood of Yemen's southern coastal city of Aden on Thursday. Rebel forces stormed Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's palace in Aden, a security official said, advancing despite a week of Saudi-led air raids.
AFP/Riyadh
Saudi Arabia said on Thursday a soldier was shot dead and 10 wounded by gunfire from across the Yemen border, its first casualties since launching an operation against Shia rebels a week ago.
The Border Guards at a post in the kingdom's southwestern Asir region came "under fire from a mountainous interior zone," the interior ministry said in a statement on the official Saudi Press Agency.
Saudi Arabia has 150,000 troops and 100 warplanes assigned to the Yemen operation, according to a Saudi adviser, but says it has no plan for now to send ground forces into the neighbouring country.
Last Friday a US defence official said two Saudi pilots who ejected from their F-15 jet off Yemen's coast had been rescued.
The Saudi-led coalition is aiming to defeat the Houthi rebels who seized power in the capital Sanaa in February, and who Riyadh feared would take over the entire country and shift it into Iran's orbit.
In Jazan region, a border district adjacent to Asir, the closure of 49 schools will be extended for a week beginning Sunday as a "precautionary measure" because of their location near the Yemeni frontier, the Saudi Press Agency said, citing an education official.
