The Yemeni Houthis said it fired a missile at an Aramco facility in the Saudi city of Jeddah. Saudi Arabia did not comment on the news.
The Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said that the Aramco oil company was targeted in Jeddah with a missile, Thursday morning.
“The missile has targeted Saudi Aramco in Jeddah at dawn with a Quds-2 cruise missile, and the hit was accurate thanks to God. This targeting comes within the framework of the natural and legitimate response to the continuation of the brutal siege and aggression against our dear people,” Saree added in a tweet on Twitter.
Houthis attack on Saudi Aramco
Most Saudi oil production and export facilities are located in the eastern province, more than a thousand kilometers from Jeddah, according to Reuters.
The Arab coalition said it had destroyed a ballistic missile fired towards Jazan in the south of the kingdom by Houthi forces, in a statement carried by Saudi state media outlets.
“The joint coalition forces were able, Thursday morning, to intercept and destroy an unmanned explosive device launched by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia,” said the coalition spokesman, Colonel Turki Al-Maliki, adding that the aircraft was “deliberately launched to target civilian objects and civilians themselves.”
According to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the Joint Forces Command of the Coalition takes and implements the necessary operational measures to protect civilians and civilian objects, in accordance with international humanitarian law and its customary rules.
During the past days, the Houthis escalated their offensive operations against Saudi territory, as they launched a ballistic missile and 15 drones in just one day, last Saturday, that affected a number of sensitive sites inside the Kingdom, as a result of extensive human losses suffered by the group on the outskirts of the oil governorate of Ma’rib, eastern Yemen.
Sanctions on the Houthis
The US Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that it sanctioned two key militants of Ansarallah, also referred to as the Houthis, in Yemen.
“Mansur Al-Sa’adi and Ahmad ‘Ali Ahsan al-Hamzi are responsible for orchestrating attacks by Houthi forces impacting Yemeni civilians, bordering nations, and commercial vessels in international waters,” it said in a statement.
“These actions, which were done to advance the Iranian regime’s destabilizing agenda, have fueled the Yemeni conflict, displacing more than one million people and pushing Yemen to the brink of famine.”
The names of the Houthi leaders were included under Executive Order No. 13611. The order aims to prohibit the property of people who have committed practices that threaten peace, security and stability in Yemen.
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