SAUDI ARABIA warned it was ready to bomb separatists in southern Yemen at the weekend — after they accused it of doing so already.

The Southern Transitional Council (STC), one of multiple players in the country’s civil war, accused Riyadh of launching air strikes against it on Friday.

Saudi Arabia didn’t address the accusation but its Brigadier General Turki al-Maliki said that “any military movements that violate [de-escalation] efforts will be dealt with … immediately.”

That may refer to the STC’s failure to heed Saudi calls for it to withdraw from territory in the southern Hadramout and Mahra governorates which it seized earlier this month.

The Saudis and the Yemeni government in exile accused the STC of “serious and horrific human rights violations against civilians,” but did not give specifics or evidence.

The STC has been allied to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government in exile for most of the country’s civil war, controlling territory in the country’s south while the Iran-allied Houthis control the capital city and most of the north.

But it also calls for the restoration of the independent state of South Yemen. South Yemen was between 1967 and 1990 the only communist state in the Middle East, though the STC does not seek restoration of anything but its borders, being led by a mixture of secular separatists and Salafi jihadists.

It enjoys military backing from the United Arab Emirates, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, expressing “concern” at developments on Saturday, praised the alleged “diplomatic leadership of our partners, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” in an appeal to the rivals to work together in Yemen.