By Al-Fassel and AFP | 2023-09-27

RIYADH -- A third Bahraini soldier died Wednesday (September 27) following a Monday attack on Saudi territory near the border with Yemen in which two other Bahraini military personnel were killed.

Bahrain, which is a member of the Saudi-led Arab coalition fighting in Yemen in support of that country's legitimate government, blamed the attack on the Iran-backed Houthis.

Bahrain's military said late Monday that one officer and one enlisted soldier had been killed in what it described as a drone attack perpetrated by the Houthis.

A third member of its contingent died Wednesday.

The Saudi foreign ministry voiced its "condemnation and denunciation" of the attack, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

It decried the "treacherous attack on the defense force of the sister kingdom of Bahrain stationed on the southern border of the kingdom, which resulted in the martyrdom of a number of its brave soldiers and the injury of others."

The Jeddah-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation attributed the incident to a "Houthi drone attack" in a Tuesday statement.

"Such provocative actions are not consistent with the positive efforts made to end the crisis in Yemen," it said.

The US embassy in Riyadh also blamed the Houthis, saying such attacks "are unacceptable and threaten the longest period of calm since the war in Yemen began."

Call for 'maximum restraint'

Condemning the attack without assigning blame, UN special envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg noted that "continued flare-ups of fighting demonstrate the fragility of the situation in Yemen," which has been at war for nearly a decade.

"Any renewal of offensive military escalation risks plunging Yemen back into a cycle of violence and undermines ongoing peace efforts," he said.

"We have been in touch with all sides to urge them to exercise maximum restraint at this critical time, and to use dialogue to resolve differences and [defuse] military tensions."

The Houthis have not commented on the attack.

The attack came as Saudi Arabia pushes for a lasting ceasefire nearly a year and a half after agreeing to a truce with the Houthis that has largely held despite officially expiring last October.

Last week, Houthi officials completed five days of talks in Riyadh, the first public visit by a Houthi delegation to Saudi Arabia since hostilities broke out.

The talks were hailed as positive but inconclusive.

Two days after the delegation returned from the kingdom, the Houthis held a major military parade in Sanaa as they marked nine years since they seized the city in a coup that triggered the protracted war.