RIYADH – A missile and drone attack targeted the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry yesterday in an assault claimed by Yemen’s Huthi rebels, a new escalation in the six-year conflict.
The attack on energy giant Aramco’s facilities came as the Saudi-led military coalition bombed Huthi-controlled capital Sanaa after intercepting a separate flurry of cross-border Huthi drones and missiles.
The rising hostilities underscore a dangerous intensification of Yemen’s conflict between the coalition-backed Yemeni government and Iran-backed Huthi, despite a renewed United States push to end the war.
Saudi Arabia’s Defence Ministry said it has intercepted a drone targeting a petroleum storage yard at Ras Tanura – one of the world’s biggest oil ports – and a ballistic missile aimed at Aramco facilities in Dhahran.
Shrapnel from the missile fell close to an Aramco residential compound in the city, which is home to thousands of company employees and their families, the Energy Ministry said.
The attacks did not result in any casualty or damage, it added, without specifying who is behind them.
Huthi rebels claimed on Twitter that they had fired drones and missiles at Ras Tanura and military targets in the area of Dammam, which is close to Dhahran.
The kingdom’s oil-rich eastern region is home to most of Aramco’s production and export facilities.
In 2019, aerial assaults on two Aramco facilities in the eastern region temporarily knocked out half of the kingdom’s crude production, underscoring the vulnerability of Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure.
The Defence Ministry said yesterday’s attacks targeted “the backbone of the world economy, oil supplies and global energy security”. – AFP, March 8, 2021
