Two Saudi soldiers killed in Yemen border clashes

Two Saudi soldiers were killed in fighting against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Riyadh confirmed on Saturday, as the kingdom reported foiling a drone attack on a southern airport.

The national guards were killed "during their participation on the southern border”, the official SPA news agency reported,  a reference normally used for the fighting in Yemen against the rebels.

SPA however did not provide details on when or how the two soldiers were killed but said senior officials took part in their funerals.

A Saudi-led Arab coalition has been fighting in Yemen since March 2015 against the Houthi rebels with the goal of reinstating the internationally recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Meanwhile, there has been an increase in Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia in recent months.

Earlier on Saturday, Saudi air defences intercepted and destroyed a Houthi drone that targeted the international airport in Abha in the south, Colonel Turki al-Maleki, spokesman for the coalition said.

An examination of the debris showed the drone was manufactured by Iran and used by the Houthi rebels, Maleki said in a statement cited by the SPA.

On Friday, Yemen's Houthi rebels said in its al-Masirah news outlet that it fired a Badr 1 missile at Saudi Arabia’s southern city of Najran.

Saudi Arabia earlier this month tested a new siren system for the capital Riyadh and the oil-rich Eastern Province, in recognition of the threat posed by the Houthi rebels.

Riyadh accuses its regional rival Tehran of supplying the Houthis with ballistic missiles, a charge Iran denies. 

More than 10,000 Yemenis have been killed and 53,000 wounded since the start of the coalition intervention in Yemen.

Meanwhile, more than 2,200 others have died from cholera and millions are on the verge of famine in what the United Nations says is the world's worst humanitarian crisis.