MORE than 10 civilians, including a four-year-old child, were injured in Saudi Arabia on Thursday after a series of attacks by forces of Yemen’s Houthi-led government, according to the Saudi military.

The attacks, which took place in the southern region of Najran, near the Yemeni border, came hours after the Yemenis claimed responsibility for another series of strikes in central and eastern Yemen that killed at least 30 government troops and wounded at least 50 others.

A Yemeni leader said Saudi-backed troops were targeted in the attacks and that “hundreds” were either killed or injured. 

The assaults hit camps for forces of the internationally recognised government in the provinces of Marib and Hadramout, the Yemeni officials said. 

Turki al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi military, said the later attack wounded seven Saudi nationals, one Yemeni, two Egyptians and one Pakistani expat. 

The Yemenis did not release any statement.

The back-to-back attacks mark the latest major escalation since a de facto truce in Yemen in April 2022 that halted major fighting between the Houthi-led Yemenis and a Saudi-led coalition.

Yemen’s Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the attacks on camps in Marib and Hadramout provinces were carried out with ballistic missiles and drones and that they were in response to a build-up of Saudi-backed forces in eastern Yemen.

The strikes killed and injured “hundreds of Saudi enemy mercenaries” and destroyed and burned camps, depots, military vehicles and weapons, the general said.

“We call upon all our people to remain vigilant and confront any Saudi aggression, and to strike Saudi troop concentrations wherever they may be,” General Saree said in his address.

The Yemenis claim that their recent escalation, including a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is in response to the Kingdom’s air and sea blockade on Yemen since 2015.