Saudi intercepts missiles fired at Aramco facility

Yemen’s armed Houthi movement fired two ballistic missiles at a Saudi Aramco facility in the southern city of Jizan on Monday, but Saudi state media said both projectiles were destroyed.

The Houthis’ al-Masirah TV said they had targeted a port belonging to the Saudi state oil giant.

The Saudi state news agency quoted the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition that intervened against the Houthis in Yemen’s war in 2015 as saying the two missiles were intercepted over Jizan and their debris fell on residential neighbourhoods.

Read: Saudi says Yemen missile started fire in Najran

“There were no casualties or damages recorded as of the time of [our] statement,” colonel Turki al-Maliki said.

Aramco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company is building a 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Jizan, part of a new economic city on the Red Sea, and it is expected to become fully operational in 2019.

The Houthis say their missile attacks on the kingdom are in retaliation for air raids on Yemen by the Western-backed coalition.

Saudi Arabia and an alliance of Muslim states intervened in Yemen’s civil war to try and push back the Houthis after they drove the internationally-recognised government into exile in Riyadh.

Air strikes by the coalition killed at least 20 people attending a wedding in a village in northwestern Yemen late on Sunday, residents and medical sources said.

The coalition has carried out thousands of air strikes in Yemen that have hit schools, markets and hospitals, killing hundreds of people – though it says it does not target civilians.

The United Nations says 10,000 people have died in the three-year-old war, and three out of four Yemenis — 22 million civilians — need relief aid.

The coalition says the Houthis are armed and supported by Saudi arch-adversary Iran – charges the group and Tehran deny.