The Saudi Defense Ministry announced today that 12 more Saudi citizens have been killed in the weeks of fighting along the border with northern Yemen, bringing the total number of Saudis killed to 73. Officials have given no indication how many of these are civilians and how many were Saudi soldiers deployed to the border.

The government added that at least 470 Saudis had been injured in the course of the fighting, as the Saudi government clashed with Shi’ite rebels along the ill-defined border area.

The number of civilians slain on the Yemeni side of the border is unclear, but appears to be considerably larger as Saudi warplanes have repeatedly bombed cities in the region. Tolls reported by the Yemeni rebels would put the deaths at several hundred.

But the Yemeni government has made no effort to count the number of casualties in the region, and is indeed inflicting casualties of its own in the region. Media has no access to the province, one of Yemen’s least developed, but humanitarian groups seem to confirm that civilians are taking considerable damage from the incessant bombings.

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