DUBAI (Reuters) – Yemen’s Houthi forces fired a missile at a Saudi Aramco facility in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea city of Jeddah, a Houthi military spokesman said on Thursday, but there was no immediate confirmation from Saudi authorities.
Saudi Aramco, whose oil production and export facilities are mostly in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, more than 1,000 km across the country from Jeddah, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a Twitter post that the attack took place at dawn using a winged drone and had struck its target, without elaborating.
Last November, a Houthi missile struck a petroleum products distribution plant in Jeddah in an attack that Aramco said hit a storage tank but did not affect domestic fuel supplies.
The Iran-aligned movement, which has been battling a Saudi-led military coalition for six years, has recently stepped up cross-border attacks on Saudi cities, mostly targeting southern Saudi Arabia. The coalition says it has intercepted most attacks.
The coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 after the Houthis ousted the internationally recognised government from power in the capital, Sanaa.
The conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthis deny being puppets of Tehran and say they are fighting a corrupt system.
(Reporting by Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Gerry Doyle)
