The Saudi-led Arab coalition on Wednesday said it shot down a booby-trapped drone launched by the Houthi rebel group in Yemen towards southern Saudi Arabia.

"The joint coalition forces were able on Wednesday morning to intercept and destroy a booby-trapped drone," Col. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the coalition, said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

He stated, "the drone was launched by the Iranian-backed terrorist Houthi militia in a systematic and deliberate manner to target civilian objects and civilians in the southern region of the Kingdom."

There was no immediate comment from the Houthi group about the coalition's statement.

Yemen has been beset by violence and chaos since 2014, when Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa. The crisis escalated in 2015 when the Saudi-led coalition launched a devastating air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi territorial gains.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the conflict in Yemen has so far claimed the lives of 233,000 people.