2 Yemeni soldiers escorting UN convoy killed in ambush

Two troops from Yemen's pro-government forces were killed in an armed ambush on a United Nations convoy in eastern Yemen, the U.N. said Saturday.

According to a statement from the U.N.'s International Office of Migration spokeswoman, the two soldiers were killed while escorting a convoy traveling west from Seiyun to Marib. No IOM staff, who were on an unspecified humanitarian mission, were injured in the attack, it said. No further details about the Friday incident were given.

A tribal leader from the area and a U.N. official told The Associated Press that the ambush took place near the town of Al-Abr, in Yemen's eastern Hadramout province. Both spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.

In a separate statement issued on Friday by Lt. Gen. Saleh Mohammed Timis of Yemen's Special Tasks Battalion _ an official branch of the Saudi-backed army _ the two men were identified as Salem Saeed Qarwan and Salem Mubarak Al-Bahri.

Yemen's ruinous conflict began in 2014 when Iranian-backed Houthi rebels came down from the northern mountains and seized the capital of Sanaa. In response, a Saudi Arabia-led coalition intervened in 2015 to try to reinstate the internationally recognized government to power. 

The conflict has since turned into a proxy war between regional foes Saudi Arabia and Iran, killing some 150,000 people and resulting in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.