Houthis claim missile attacks on southern Saudi Arabia | Today’s news
(Bloomberg) — The Houthis claimed to have hit Saudi Arabia with missiles Saturday morning as the Iran-backed group deepens its involvement in the Middle East war.
Saudi authorities issued emergency warnings for Jazan and Yanbu provinces around 6:10 a.m. local time, asking people to seek shelter. The government lifted the warning for Jazan shortly afterwards, saying on X that “the danger has passed”.
Yemen-based Islamist militants said they attacked the southern Saudi city of Jizan — on the Red Sea coast and in Jazan province — on Saturday, according to a Telegram post from their main media outlet.
The group said Riyadh targeted Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Hodeidah governorate on Friday.
The Houthis announced a few days ago that they would block Saudi ports and threatened to attack any ship that visited them. Soon after, she attacked two oil tankers bound for Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea, hitting at least one of them.
The escalation compounds the already strong pressure on regional energy flows. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries a fifth of the world’s oil, remains largely paralyzed by hostilities between the US and Iran. Any permanent disruption to Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea export routes, through which it ships millions of barrels a day, particularly from the port of Yanbu, would likely push oil prices even higher.
Brent crude has risen around 27% in the past two weeks as the US-Iranian skirmish worsened and the Houthis effectively opened a second front in the war. The global benchmark closed at $96.78 per barrel on Friday.
The Houthi blockade is a response, the group says, to the kingdom’s recent strikes on the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
The Houthis captured Sanaa in 2014 near the beginning of Yemen’s ongoing civil war. They survived a roughly seven-year bombing campaign led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and still control areas containing the majority of Yemen’s population.
The Saudis and Houthis agreed to a truce a few years ago, but since the US and Israel went to war with Iran this year, it has been uncertain and tensions have been rising.
Iran is the main backer and sponsor of the Houthis, although the group is more autonomous than other proxies of Tehran, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
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