The Saudi-owned television station Al Arabiya showed images of Saudi soldiers blindfolding captured Houthi rebels, who have spent years fighting the Yemeni government.

The border skirmish marked Saudi Arabia’s first unilateral military campaign in decades. The fighting began last Tuesday when the rebels - accusing Saudi Arabia of helping the Yemeni government - overran a strategic mountain area on the Yemeni-Saudi border known as Jebel Dukhan, killing a Saudi border guard and wounding 11 others. Another border guard later died of his wounds.

Saudi Arabia then began bombing rebel positions, introducing an international element to Yemen’s five-year-old civil war with the rebels.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia’s assistant minister for defense and aviation, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, said, “The situation is calm, especially in Jebel Dukan, of which full control has been regained,” according to the state-owned Saudi Press Agency. Prince Khaled said 3 Saudi troops had been killed and 15 wounded in the fighting. He added that four Saudi soldiers were missing, the press agency reported, but dismissed Houthi claims that they had been captured.