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Saudi authorities said “a Houthi drone struck an oil storage facility in Ras Tanura, an important port for transporting oil, but the crash did not result in injury or damage.”
The Energy Ministry said another missile targeting Aramco facilities in Dhahran was intercepted and destroyed.
The Houthis in Yemen said earlier that they had launched more than twenty missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia, in an attempt to reach the country’s oil facilities.
In announcing the attacks, the Houthis, who have been fighting the Saudi-led coalition for six years, said they had attacked military targets in the Saudi cities of Dammam, Asir and Jizan.
The Saudi Ministry of Energy said that “the Ras Tanura oil storage facility, the site of an oil refinery and the world’s largest offshore facility for loading oil, was attacked by a drone coming from of the sea”.
The Defense Ministry said the armed drone was intercepted and destroyed before reaching its target.
The ministry said that “fragments of a ballistic missile landed near a residential complex in Dhahran used by Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, the Saudi state oil company,” adding that the attack did not result in injury or loss of property. .
A spokesperson for the ministry said in a statement to state media: “Such acts of sabotage are not only aimed at the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but also aimed at the security and stability of energy supplies around the world, and therefore the world economy “.
The Saudi-led coalition earlier said it had intercepted 12 armed drones that targeted “civilian targets,” in addition to two ballistic missiles launched at Jizan.
The sites attacked on Sunday were on the Gulf Coast in the Eastern Province, where most of Aramco’s production and export facilities are located.
In 2019, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, was the victim of a massive missile and drone attack on oil facilities a few miles from the bombed facilities on Sunday, and Riyadh blamed Iran, which Tehran denies.
The attack forced Saudi Arabia to temporarily shut down more than half of its crude production, sparking prices.
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Houthi army spokesman Yahya Saree said on Sunday: “The group launched 14 drones and eight ballistic missiles in a large operation in the heart of Saudi Arabia.”
The Houthis recently stepped up their cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia as the United States and the United Nations push for a ceasefire to revive stalled political negotiations to end the war.
Last Thursday, the movement said it “fired a missile at an Aramco petroleum distribution station in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, which the Houthis attacked in November 2020, and hit a tank.” Aramco and Saudi officials did not comment on the allegations on Thursday.
The military coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 after the Houthis ousted the government in the capital, Sana’a.
The conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Colonel Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi Ministry of Defense and the Saudi-led military coalition, said in a statement that the ministry would take “all necessary and dissuasive measures to protect its national assets” .
Earlier, the coalition said it launched airstrikes on Houthi military targets in Sana’a and other parts of Yemen. And he warned on Sunday that “civilians and civilian objects in the Kingdom are a red line.”
He said the Houthis were encouraged after the new US administration removed the group’s terrorist designations in February, imposed by the administration of former President Donald Trump, with support from Riyadh.
Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Houthi military leaders in the first punitive measures against the group by President Joe Biden’s administration, following an increase in attacks on Saudi cities and the intensification of the fighting in the Yemeni region of Marib.
In February, Biden announced the end of US support for the coalition’s offensive operations, but said the United States would continue to help Saudi Arabia defend itself.
The war, which has been at a military stalemate for years, has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed Yemen to the brink of famine.
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