Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for attacks on Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude oil pumping stations and Riyadh’s international airport amid escalating hostilities threatening oil supplies and raising fears of a wider regional conflict.
The claims came on Monday as the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen announced that it had destroyed two ballistic missile launchers in the capital, Sanaa.
According to the coalition, one of the launchers was used to fire a missile towards Riyadh, which was intercepted.
Saudi Arabia had not immediately confirmed the latest attacks claimed by the Houthis, who have increasingly targeted the kingdom’s airports, ports and oil infrastructure with ballistic missiles and drones as tensions intensify across the region.
The rebels also claimed to have struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.
The airport resumed operations at two terminals on Sunday following an earlier attack claimed by the group this month, which killed 13 people in the kingdom’s deadliest assault in more than a decade.
Meanwhile, senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan are expected to meet Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday to discuss regional cooperation, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The meeting would mark the first high-level engagement between Iran and all three countries since Saudi Arabia came under intensified attacks by the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia temporarily suspended operations on its 1,200-kilometre East-West oil pipeline in September as a precaution following a drone attack that Riyadh and Baghdad said originated in Iraq.
The pipeline has become a crucial alternative export route while the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed because of the war.
The Houthis also claimed on Saturday that they had targeted the East-West pipeline, crude oil pumping stations, an Aramco facility in Yanbu and the Rabigh refinery. Saudi authorities did not confirm those claims.
In a separate announcement on Monday, the Saudi-led coalition said it had conducted military operations against Houthi positions in Yemen, destroying five tunnels used for storing ballistic missiles, four missile launchers and a missile storage facility.
Coalition spokesperson Turki al-Maliki said the operation also targeted Houthi supply routes, fighters and military equipment along front lines in Yemen. He pledged continued “deterrent operational measures” to protect civilians.
Saudi Arabia has stepped up its attacks on the Houthis since the rebels seized strategic areas along Yemen’s Red Sea coast last month and advanced towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a vital international shipping route for oil producers in the Gulf.
The latest clashes have effectively ended a United Nations-brokered truce that had largely held since 2022.
Saudi Arabia led a military coalition into Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to support the internationally recognised government, a year after the Houthis captured the capital, Sanaa.
