On Friday, a spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition said it had “intercepted and destroyed three drones in the southern area and Riyadh … and two cruise missiles over the Red Sea”.
He added that “in the past hours, we intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile over Yanbu”, a city home to the terminus of a major oil pipeline on the Red Sea coast.
The Houthi attacks have proliferated since the group launched a lightning offensive in Yemen in September, seizing strategic government-held territory along the Red Sea coast overlooking a major chokepoint for global shipping.
The pressure on Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, comes as global energy markets were already rattled by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz at the outset of the wider Middle East war in February.
AIRPORT STRUCK
The Security Council also denounced the group’s “reckless strikes” on Riyadh’s airport, which the Saudi-led coalition said had been targeted at least 20 times so far this month.
Krimly, of the Saudi foreign ministry, accused Iran on Thursday of continuing “to arm, train and support the Houthi militia in violation of UN Security Council resolutions”.
Yemeni government forces have launched a counteroffensive with Saudi air support to retake areas seized by the Houthis, but have so far failed to reverse their gains.
On Friday, the local security office in Aden, the government’s interim capital, said two missiles landed within the perimeter of the city’s airport, “in the second incident of its kind in less than a week”, adding that no one was killed.
The Houthis, in a statement attributed to a military source, said the attack targeted “the Saudi forces’ command headquarters” as well as a weapons depot.
