Saudi Strikes in or near Yemen

Saudi Arabia says it carried out airstrikes against “infiltrators” from Yemen inside Saudi territory. They did not identify the infiltrators or address claims the strikes hit across the border, targeting Shiite rebels who have been battling government forces for the past few months in Yemen’s Saada province.
Yemen officials claim Saudi forces shelled rebel positions in Saada. Regardless of the location, the offensive threatens to pull Riyadh into a conflict that has for months been a major concern. Riyadh has been concerned about a spillover of the fighting, of Iran’s alleged involvement in a proxy war and of the possibility that Yemen-based al-Qaida militants could capitalize on the tense situation.
The Yemeni government has accused Iran of aiding rebels while the rebels have accused Saudi Arabia, Iran’s fiercest regional rival, of carrying out bombing runs against them. The same dynamic has been seen in various forms in Lebanon, where Iran supports the Shiite militant Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia favors a U.S.-backed faction, and in Iraq, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have thrown support to conflicting sides in the Sunni-Shiite fault-line.
The northern rebels, known as Hawthis, have been battling Yemeni government forces the past few months in the latest flare-up of a sporadic five-year conflict. They claim their needs are ignored by a Yemeni government that is increasingly allied with hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, who consider Shiites heretics.