Riyadh intercepts Huthi missile, drones after airport attack

RIYADH – Saudi Arabia yesterday intercepted a ballistic missile and two drones fired by Yemen’s Huthi rebels, said a Riyadh-led coalition, as Western powers denounced a strike on an airport a day earlier.

The Iran-backed Huthis have escalated attacks on the kingdom and Saudi-backed Yemeni forces days after the United States moved to delist the rebels as terrorists and stepped up efforts to de-escalate the six-year conflict.

A rebel drone early yesterday targeted the southern garrison town of Khamis Mushait that hosts a key airbase, but was destroyed before reaching its target, the official SPA news agency cited the coalition as saying.

Hours later, the coalition said it intercepted a rebel ballistic missile launched towards Khamis Mushait and another explosives-laden drone that targeted the kingdom’s southern region.

The coalition did not report any casualties or damage.

The strikes come after the rebels mounted a drone attack on Abha airport in the kingdom’s southwest on Wednesday, leaving a civilian plane ablaze.

In a joint statement yesterday, Germany, Britain and France said they “strongly condemn” the airport attack, which they said is in “violation of international law”.

The US, too, denounced the assault, calling on the Huthis to “immediately stop these aggressive acts” and “constructively engage” in President Joe Biden’s peace effort.

Biden, who has reversed his predecessor Donald Trump’s policy on the conflict, has deployed his new Yemen envoy, Tim Lenderking, to Saudi Arabia.

On Wednesday, Lenderking and his United Nations counterpart, Martin Griffiths, met Saudi Arabia’s deputy defence minister, Prince Khaled Salman, who oversees the Yemen portfolio.

Separately, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the attack on Abha during a call with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Farhan, reported SPA.

After leading its allies into the conflict in 2015, Saudi Arabia is now stuck in a military quagmire.

Years of bombings have failed to shake the rebels’ hold on the capital, Sanaa, and they have steadily expanded their reach in the country’s north.

Yemen’s grinding conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions, according to international organisations, sparking what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. – AFP, February 12, 2021