The Houthis have not yet admitted to carrying out the drone attack, but the Saudi-led coalition said it reserved the right to respond.
Bahrain’s military command has accused Yemen’s Houthi fighters of killing two Bahraini soldiers in a drone strike on Yemen’s southern border with Saudi Arabia.
In a statement carried by Bahrain’s state news agency on Monday, the Bahraini army said a number of Bahraini soldiers were also injured in the attack. The exact number of wounded soldiers has not been made public.
A Bahraini military statement said: “This terrorist attack was carried out by the Houthis, who have seized the position of the Bahraini Guard on the southern border of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia despite the suspension of military operations between the warring sides in Yemen. “We sent an aircraft to target them,” he said. .
The island nation of Bahrain is a close ally of Saudi Arabia and has been at war with Iran-aligned Houthi fighters in Yemen for years.
The Houthis did not immediately acknowledge carrying out the attack. There was also no mention of attacks by the Houthis on media or social media activity. Houthi negotiators met with Saudi officials earlier this month about a potential deal to end the conflict in Yemen.
It is unclear whether the drone strike and killing of Bahraini soldiers will derail peace talks.
The Saudi-led coalition warned Houthi fighters that “such repeated hostile and provocative actions are not consistent with the active efforts being made to end the crisis and reach a comprehensive political solution.” It doesn’t match,” he warned.
The coalition said it “reserves the right to respond at the appropriate time and place.”
The U.S. State Department condemned the attack and said the U.S. continues to advance the Yemeni peace agreement.
“We continue to work with our regional partners to begin the Yemen-Yemen process to achieve lasting peace,” the State Department said.
Nabil Khoury, former head of the US mission to Yemen, told Al Jazeera that the attack appeared to be the result of “normal tensions” on the front line.
“Unless someone is trying to provoke something, I think it’s a passing event and it doesn’t have that big of an impact,” Corey said.
Yemen’s internationally recognized government condemned the drone attack on Monday.
Foreign Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak said he spoke by phone with Bahrain’s chief diplomat Abdullatif Al Zayani and expressed his condolences and solidarity with Bahrain.
Yemen’s war began in 2014, when the Houthis swept from their strongholds in the north and captured the capital Sanaa and much of the north. In response, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government to power.
The fighting quickly escalated into a deadlocked proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, killing hundreds of thousands of people and spreading hunger and misery in Yemen, which was already the Arab world’s poorest country before the conflict.
Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations in a deal brokered by China, further raising hopes for an end to the conflict in Yemen. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia welcomed a Houthi peace negotiation delegation, saying the talks had yielded “positive results.”
A U.N.-brokered ceasefire has already largely halted violence, and Yemen has seen only sporadic clashes since it expired about a year ago. But diplomatic officials warn that the situation remains unstable.