Saudi oil sites, Aden base attacked after deadly strikes, say Houthis

Yemen’s Houthis launched fresh attacks on Saudi Arabia and the seat of Yemen’s internationally recognised government yesterday after blaming the kingdom for strikes that the Iran-backed group said killed 17 people.

Saudi Arabia and the government it backs in Yemen have come under sustained attack in recent weeks from the Houthis as a years-long truce broke down in the summer, shifting the focus of the wider US-Iran war that erupted in February.

Over the past 24 hours, the Yemeni fighters said they targeted three Saudi airports, including the international airport in the capital, Riyadh; energy installations; a pipeline; and an air base.

Military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group launched missiles at “King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, the capital of the Saudi enemy, in two phases”, the airports in Dammam in the east and Najran in the south.

The group also launched attacks on the southern Khamis Mushait air base as well as “crude oil pumping stations and the crude oil pipeline from east to west”.

The Saudi civil defence agency said it had also responded to falling debris in the Mecca and Medina regions yesterday after intercepting two Houthi missiles. The Houthis denied targeting the cities, the two holiest in Islam, calling the Saudi claim a “huge lie”.

The Houthis also fired at the southern Yemeni city of Aden, the interim seat of the Saudi-backed government, saying they targeted a naval base and military camp overseen by Saudi forces.

Authorities said the coast guard headquarters and a second building of theirs, as well as Aden airport, had been targeted.

The fresh attack claims came after the Houthis’ Al-Masirah TV channel accused the kingdom of separate strikes in Yemen that killed more than a dozen people. Riyadh has not claimed the alleged strikes.

The Houthi broadcaster said a strike on a house in Sanaa killed at least four people, another at a residential building for cement factory workers killed eight and another outside the city of Hodeida killed five from the same family.

Yemen’s civil war, pitting the Iran-backed Houthis against the Saudi-supported and internationally recognised government, had been dormant since a ceasefire in 2022, but erupted again in July as the wider Middle East war roiled the region.