Riyadh: A Saudi soldier and a civilian have been killed in cross-border shelling from Al Houthi-controlled northern Yemen, authorities said late on Saturday.

A Saudi patrol was hit on Saturday morning in the southwestern region of Assir, killing the soldier, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Later in the day, the southwestern city of Najran was struck, leaving dead a foreign resident, a civil defence spokesman said in a statement on SPA.

About 90 civilians and soldiers have died amid shelling and skirmishes along the border since March, when a Saudi-led Arab coalition began air and ground action in Yemen.

The coalition is backing the Yemeni government in a bid to push back Iran-backed Al Houthi militants who overran Sana’a in September 2014.

The United Nations says more than 6,100 people have been killed in the conflict since March, about half of them civilians, and some 30,000 wounded.