A soldier for Yemen’s exiled government opened fire on Saudi troops during exercises in eastern Yemen, killing two and wounding another in a rare insider attack at a Saudi-led base in Seiyun, officials said.
The shooting took place in Hadramawt province, far from the main battle lines that have defined Yemen’s long war, but it underscored how the conflict continues to produce sudden violence even after a yearslong cease-fire between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi movement largely held. The Saudi Press Agency said the dead included an officer and a noncommissioned officer and that the wounded soldier had been taken back to the kingdom.
The assault immediately raised questions about motive and affiliation. No one claimed responsibility. The Houthi movement did not say it carried out the attack, though one Houthi official praised it on social media as a sign of a “harsh future” for what he called invaders. AP reported that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has long operated in Hadramawt, but the group also did not claim the shooting. A recent UN expert report has said al-Qaeda and the Houthis have begun to coordinate operations directly, adding to the uncertainty around the attack.
The Saudi statement described the incident as a “lone wolf” attack that did not represent the Yemeni defense ministry as a whole. Yemeni officials identified the gunman as belonging to the First Military Region based in Seiyun, and police in the area circulated photos of him while offering a reward for information leading to his arrest. Authorities did not publicly give a motive.
The episode comes against the backdrop of a war that has drawn in regional powers and devastated Yemen since the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 and a Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year. Even with a truce that expired in 2022, the conflict has remained active, with Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and repeated U.S. strikes on Houthi positions.
The same AP report said U.S. warplanes had carried out fresh strikes on Houthi targets around Sanaa and in Amran province, part of an ongoing air campaign that began in January. It also noted a separate sign of regional thaw: Iran’s armed forces chief met his Saudi counterpart in Tehran the following day, with defense diplomacy among the topics discussed.
For Yemen, however, the Seiyun shooting was a reminder that the country’s conflict still reaches into bases, barracks and local security structures. The war has killed more than 150,000 people, according to AP’s report, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Even as top-level diplomacy shifts, local violence remains capable of upsetting the fragile balance.
