Riyadh--Saudi Arabia said Thursday a soldier was shot dead and 10 more wounded by gunfire from across the Yemeni border, its first casualties since beginning a operation against Shiite 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 Huthi 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.
AFP
