Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement has attacked energy facilities and other civilian infrastructure in Saudi Arabia with dozens of drones and missiles, injuring 73 people, Saudi authorities say. Tuesday’s attacks hit four south-western cities, causing fires at oil facilities and installations that led to a temporary halt in operations, according to Saudi Arabia’s military and energy ministry.
The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said that its forces would respond to the “dangerous escalation”.
The Houthis said the attacks were retaliation for dozens of recent Saudi strikes on areas of north-western Yemen that they control.
On Monday, they accused Saudi Arabia of bombing a prison in the city of al-Hazm and killing at least 11 people. Twenty inmates are reportedly missing under the rubble.
The spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, Maj Gen Turki al-Maliki, said the Houthi drone and missile attacks targeted civilian and economic sites in the cities of Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran, and that women and children were among the injured.
An energy ministry statement cited an official source as saying that injuries were also reported after “several energy sector facilities and installations” were targeted.
The attacks “caused fires at several locations, leading to a temporary halt in some operations,” they added.
Maliki described Houthi attacks as a “dangerous escalation that confirms the hostile and irresponsible approach of this terrorist militia” and said the Saudi-led coalition would “take all necessary operational measures to deter” the group.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea accused the Saudi military of carrying out more than 120 air strikes on the Yemeni provinces of Marib, al-Bayda, Hudaydah, Taiz and Jawf over the past three days, and of committing “grave crimes”.
He said the Houthis had responded to this “brutal aggression” with “dozens of ballistic missiles and drones”, which he claimed caused “significant damage”.
A Saudi-led coalition of Arab states has backed Yemen’s government against the Houthis in the country’s devastating civil war for more than a decade.
A four-year-old informal ceasefire began to unravel in July, when the Houthis announced a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and began missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.
The Houthis said they were retaliating for a Saudi blockade of ports and airports in their territory, as well as an air strike on Sanaa airport that they blamed on the kingdom.
There has been heavy fighting on Yemen’s south-western coast since Thursday, when the Houthis launched an offensive against Yemeni pro-government forces in a bid to take control of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
The fighting has reportedly left more than 300 people dead and displaced 18,500.
The Red Sea has become crucial for oil shipments from Saudi Arabia during the US and Israel’s war with Iran, which has led to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.
By BBC News
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