CAIRO, Nov 13 (Reuters) – Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said on Friday they had fired two ballistic missiles at what they described as concentrations of Saudi forces in Al-Tuwal in Jazan province, hours after Saudi civil defence issued an all-clear for the province.
It was not immediately clear whether the attack claimed by the Houthis was related to the alerts issued by Saudi civil defence in Jazan earlier on Friday.
Jazan is home to a Saudi Aramco refinery with a capacity of 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Southern Saudi Arabia, which borders Yemen, has come under repeated missile and drone attacks by the Houthis on military installations and energy infrastructure, including the Jazan refinery.
The group also said in a separate statement that it had attacked Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport and a pumping station on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline. There was no immediate Saudi confirmation of the Houthi account.
With the conflict in the Middle East disrupting oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, Riyadh has rerouted about 4 million barrels per day of crude via the East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, equivalent to about 4% of global supply.
Fighting between the Houthis and the coalition backing Yemen’s internationally recognised government has intensified after the Houthis advanced in September towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a strategic shipping chokepoint at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, across the Arabian Peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz.
(Reporting by Enas Alashray and Muhammad Al Gebaly; Editing by Alex Richardson and Sanjeev Miglani)
