Saudi coalition strikes fuel depot near Yemen's capital
The Houthis have warned Saudi Arabia that they will retaliate by targeting the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Dammam.
**Saudi-led coalition strikes fuel depot near Yemen’s capital**
The Houthi-run Yemen Petroleum Company said residents of Sanaa had enough fuel supplies
The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen says it has struck a fuel depot near the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa.
Maj Gen Turki al-Maliki said the Houthis were using the Yemen Petroleum Company’s al-Sabaha facility to support their war effort, including missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia.
Before the strike, the coalition warned civilians to leave the site ahead of a “special operation”. Houthi media reported that the facility had been hit before al-Maliki confirmed the attack.
The Houthis have threatened to retaliate by targeting the airport and Aramco refinery in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, as well as Aramco’s headquarters in the eastern city of Dammam.
The strike came as the Saudi cabinet, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said the Iran-backed group would “bear the consequences” of its recent deadly attacks on the kingdom.
Thirteen people were killed when a missile struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday, and another person died in a similar attack there the next day.
On Tuesday, the coalition said its forces had shot down three drones north of Riyadh.
The Houthis say they are attacking airports, oil and gas facilities, and military bases in Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones in response to deadly Saudi strikes on areas they control in western Yemen, including Sanaa.
The Saudi-led coalition has been giving air support to Yemeni pro-government forces carrying out an offensive on Yemen’s Red Sea coast and on several other front lines.
An AFP correspondent reported that petrol station queues formed in Sanaa on Tuesday afternoon after the coalition warned of an imminent operation against the al-Sabaha oil facility, with many residents fearing shortages.
The Houthi-run Yemen Petroleum Company issued a statement to calm concerns, saying the facility “does not contain any stock of petroleum products”.
It also said it had “taken all necessary precautionary measures to address any emergency, ensuring the stability of the supply situation and the continued meeting of citizens’ needs in a normal manner”.
Yemen has been ravaged by a civil war that began in 2014, when the Houthis drove the internationally-recognised government out of Sanaa. The war intensified in 2015 after the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened in an effort to restore the government’s rule.
A four-year-old informal ceasefire began to fall apart in July, when the Houthis announced a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and started missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.
The Houthis said they were responding to what they describe as a Saudi blockade of their territory, as well as an air strike on Sanaa airport that they blamed on the kingdom.
The conflict escalated in September after the Houthis took control of part of Yemen’s south-western Red Sea coast near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a key point for global shipping. Their advance helped push up oil prices after six months of war between the US, Israel and Iran.
Last week, pro-government forces said they had retaken territory overlooking Bab al-Mandab after launching a major counter-offensive backed by Saudi air strikes.
Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed in Yemen since August. The UN’s human rights office says at least 54 of them were civilians, half of them children.
More than 216,000 people have also been displaced nationwide, and suspected cholera cases have tripled in three weeks, rising from 217 to 647, according to the UN.