DOHA
Two Saudi border patrol guards were killed Friday in a shootout in the country's southern Asir province on the border with Yemen, according to Saudi's official SPA press agency.
It was the second attack in three days to target a Saudi border station.
Border patrol troops in the province's Al-Husun district came under heavy fire from a mountainous area in Yemeni territory, leading to a shootout that left two Saudi troops dead, the SPA quoted an Interior Ministry spokesman as saying.
The SPA stopped short, however, of identifiying the attackers.
Saudi Arabia's Alriyadh newspaper, however, reported that two Saudi border troops had been killed in a shootout with militants from Yemen's Shiite Houthi group.
Friday's attack brings the death toll among the ranks of Saudi troops since the launch of a Saudi-led Arab campaign against Yemen's Houthis to three, after a similar attack two days earlier left one soldier dead and ten injured.
For the past week, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have pounded Houthi positions across Yemen.
Riyadh says its anti-Houthi campaign comes in response to appeals by embattled Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi to "save the [Yemeni] people from the Houthi militias."
Yemen has remained in turmoil since last September, when the Houthis overran capital Sanaa, from which they have since sought to extend their influence to other parts of the fractious country.
Some Gulf States accuse Shiite Iran of supporting Yemen's Houthi insurgency.
