Oct 26 (Reuters) – Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said on Monday they had attacked Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude oil pumping stations and Riyadh airport, as rising hostilities choke oil supplies and threaten to erupt into a larger conflict.
The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said earlier it had destroyed two ballistic missile launchers in the capital Sanaa, including one used to fire a missile towards Riyadh that the coalition said it had intercepted.
There was no immediate Saudi confirmation of the Houthi attacks.
The Houthis have been firing ballistic missiles and drones at Saudi airports, ports and oil installations, turning US ally Saudi Arabia into a pressure point in the wider war.
The Houthis also said they had struck Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, which resumed operations at two terminals on Sunday after an attack claimed by the group earlier this month killed 13 people, the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade.
Top officials from the Mecca Pact countries Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan are set to meet Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday to discuss regional coordination, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The planned talks would be the first high-level contact between Iran and all members of the three-nation bloc since Saudi Arabia came under escalating attacks from Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.
STRIKES INSIDE YEMEN
Saudi Arabia temporarily shut down its 1,200-km (746-mile) East-West pipeline in September as a precaution after a drone attack that Riyadh and Baghdad said originated in Iraq. The pipeline has served as a key route for Middle East oil exports while the Strait of Hormuz has been largely shut by the war.
The Houthis also said on Saturday they had targeted the East-West pipeline, crude oil pumping stations, an Aramco facility in Yanbu and the Rabigh refinery. There was no Saudi confirmation of those claims.
The Saudi coalition said on Monday it had also carried out a military operation against Houthi targets in Yemen, destroying five tunnels used to store ballistic missiles, four ballistic missile launchers and a missile storage facility.
The operation also targeted Houthi supply lines, fighters and military equipment along front lines inside Yemen, coalition spokesperson Turki al-Maliki said, pledging continued “deterrent operational measures” to protect civilians.
Saudi Arabia has intensified its strikes on the Houthis since the group captured strategic areas along Yemen’s Red Sea coast last month, advancing towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key global shipping route for Gulf oil producers on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz.
The latest fighting has effectively ended a UN-brokered truce that had largely held since 2022. Saudi Arabia led a coalition into Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to back the internationally recognised government, a year after the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa.
(Reporting by Yomna Ehab and Eman Abouhassira; Writing by Eman Abouhassira; Editing by Tom Hogue, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Saad Sayeed)
