A Saudi policeman was killed in a gunfight with "terrorists" in a town populated by minority Shiites in the east of the kingdom, the interior ministry said.

Three other policemen as well as a Saudi and a foreign resident were wounded in the incident on Sunday in Awamiya, according to a ministry statement published by the official SPA news agency.

Yemeni rebels made new gains in the battleground southern city Aden Sunday as a Saudi-led coalition trying to halt their advance faced growing calls for a humanitarian pause in air strikes.

The Red Cross has appealed for an immediate truce to allow families to seek water, food and medical assistance, describing the situation as "dire."

Saudi Arabia will raze 96 deserted border villages to prevent their use by infiltrators from neighboring Yemen, where the kingdom is leading air strikes on rebels, a report said Sunday.

Ten villages have already been demolished since a Saudi-led military coalition began air strikes on Shiite Huthi rebels on March 26, the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper reported.

The Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Adel al-Jubeir, slammed Hizbullah for depicting the Yemen crisis as a sectarian conflict, accusing the party and its longtime ally the Islamic Republic of Iran of being behind the Shiite Huthi rebellion in Sanaa.

“In Lebanon, Hizbullah controls a state, and we do not want such a situation to develop in Yemen through Huthis,” al-Jubeir said during a symposium at the U.S. Congress on “Chaos in Yemen: Analysis, diagnosis and prospects”, which was organized by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations in Washington.

Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq stressed on Sunday that the cabinet of Prime Minister Tammam Salam “remains a necessity for all” rivals.

“Despite all the developments, we are still capable of locating agreement amid the absence of a head of state and the regional conflicts,” Mashnouq said in comments published in the Kuwaiti al-Seyassah newspaper.

Algeria evacuated 160 of its citizens from war-torn Yemen on Saturday as a Saudi-led coalition continued a bombing campaign against rebel targets in the Arabian peninsula, national news agency APS reported.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika called for the operation after monitoring the deteriorating security situation in Yemen in recent days, foreign minister Ramtane Lamamra said. 

The lights fade and rapid-fire images flash across a large screen to the sounds of war: marching men, the flaming afterburner of a fighter jet, radio traffic and adrenaline-pumping music.

Cue multilingual Brigadier General Ahmed Assiri and his nightly media briefing on Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led coalition which began air strikes against Shiite militia in neighbouring Yemen on March 26.

Two more Saudi soldiers have been killed on the border with Yemen, the interior ministry said on Friday.

"Two soldiers from the border guards were martyred during an exchange of fire at a border point in Asir region" in Saudi Arabia's southwest, said the ministry's spokesman cited by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Saudi King Salman told U.S. President Barack Obama that he hoped a final nuclear deal between world powers and Iran would strengthen regional and world security, official media said.

In a phone call with Obama on Thursday, Salman "expressed his hope that a final binding deal would be reached to reinforce the stability and security of the region and the world," the SPA news agency said.

Saudi-led air raids drove back rebels in the last stronghold of Yemen's absent president Friday, while al-Qaida militants seized a major army base in the southeast of the country.

The impoverished Arabian Peninsula state has sunk further into chaos since the coalition spearheaded by Riyadh launched Operation Decisive Storm on March 26 to try to halt the advance by Shiite Huthi rebels.