Saudi Arabia said all options were open including ground operations to stop mortar attacks on its border towns by Yemen's Houthi militia, as its jets hammered the group's positions ahead of U.S.-led talks on a temporary truce. A second night on Wednesday of raids aimed at suppressing further Houthi shelling struck the group's stronghold of Saada, near Yemen's Saudi border, and the small port of Maidi. "It is possible to repeat the same number of sorties, a land operation is possible, all options are open to prevent these practices of the militias," military spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri told TV channel al-Arabiya late on Wednesday. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry began negotiations in Riyadh to pause the campaign of air strikes launched by a Saudi-led coalition on March 26 to allow aid for Yemenis desperate for food, water and medicine. In the interview, Asseri did not say whether Saudi Arabia would consider the Yemeni government's request for international troops to relieve the southern city of Aden, where the Houthis took the vital Tawahi district in heavy fighting on Wednesday. Earlier, the Houthis also it had shelled a Saudi air defense facility north of Najran after sending mortars and rockets into the city on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing eight people. Another two Saudis were killed by Houthi shells hitting a village in Jizan province. The Arab coalition has been wary of putting boots onto the ground in Yemen, keenly aware of the difficulties of tackling a well entrenched guerrilla army in its own mountainous terrain. More than 100 Saudi soldiers were killed during a 2009-10 border war between the kingdom and the Houthis, which included ground fighting in frontier villages. In this conflict 10 Saudi army and border guards troops have died in mortar strikes. A Saudi Apache was damaged in an emergency landing near the border on Thursday, a Gulf official said. He added that the pilots were safe and denied an earlier report by al-Masirah that the aircraft had been shot down by the Houthis. Since the coalition started its campaign to push back the Houthis and restore the government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled Yemen in March, Asseri has consistently declined either to rule out land operations or say they will occur.
