The war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi movement claimed victims on both sides of the border on Sunday, and the list of places it disrupts keeps getting longer.
In the southern Saudi city of Najran, a projectile fired from Yemen came down in a residential neighbourhood. Saudi emergency services reported six people injured, with damage to three homes and as many cars, calling any attempt to target civilians a flagrant breach of humanitarian law. Warning alerts had sounded in the city that afternoon before being lifted. The Saudi-led coalition said it also shot down two ballistic missiles over the south.
Across the border, in the Houthi-held province of Saada, a coalition air raid destroyed a family house in the Sahar district. The Houthi-run health ministry first reported nine dead, five of them children, and later raised the toll to ten, with 23 wounded. Rescuers were still digging through the rubble.
The coalition did confirm its own losses: two pilots died when their helicopter came down near the border in Najran. It blamed a technical fault; the Houthis claimed to have shot down an Apache. They are the first coalition military deaths since the long-dormant conflict flared up again in July.
Even the capital now feels the war. The Kingdom Centre tower, home to banks and consultancies, ordered all office staff to work from home until further notice, schools stayed online for a second week, and the main airport remains shut after an attack last week killed 13 people. The rebels have also proclaimed a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia and taken territory around the narrow Red Sea gateway to the Gulf of Aden.
Diplomacy is racing to keep up. In Cairo, lawmakers needed another day to debate whether Egypt should come to the kingdom’s military aid, as Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has asked, and France’s foreign minister was due in the Saudi capital ahead of a Gulf tour by Emmanuel Macron.
