Yemen hits targets deep inside Saudi Arabia in retaliatory drone attacks

The Yemeni army and allied fighters from popular committees have conducted drone attacks on several targets deep inside Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the ongoing siege imposed on Yemen by a Saudi-led military coalition.

Yahya Saree, the spokesman for Yemen’s army, said in a televised address on Friday that an operation dubbed “The first operation to break the siege” had been carried against Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the intensified aggression and the banning of fuel ships from entering the impoverished country.

The spokesman said nine drones — three of them of the Sammad-3 type — targeted a Saudi Aramco refinery in the capital, Riyadh. He added that the Yemeni forces also targeted facilities belonging to Aramco in the southwestern regions of Jizan and Abha, as well as other “sensitive” positions in the kingdom, using six Sammad-1 drones.

Saree vowed that the Yemeni forces “would not hesitate to respond to the unjust siege” imposed on their country.

He further said the Yemeni forces were on high alert to carry out military operations in response to the ban imposed on Yemen-bound petroleum products.

But he did not specify when the operation had taken place.

Earlier on Friday, Saudi state news agency SPA cited an Energy Ministry official as saying that a drone attack had targeted a refinery in Riyadh on Thursday morning, claiming that it had not affected the supplies of petroleum and its derivatives.

Yemenis hold nationwide protests, blame US for petroleum products crisis

Mass protests are held in several Yemeni cities to condemn the siege imposed by the Saudi-led coalition against the war-torn country and the seizure of ships carrying critically needed petroleum products.

Essam al-Mutawakel, a spokesman for the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC), said earlier this month that the Arab country was experiencing the toughest crisis since the start of the Saudi aggression and siege nearly seven years ago.

Yemen’s Minister of Oil and Minerals Ahmad Abdullah Dares has warned that the Saudi seizure of ships carrying petroleum products to Yemen could lead to the suspension of the service sectors and cause “a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies — including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — launched a brutal war against Yemen in March 2015. The war was meant to eliminate Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall a former regime. The conflict, accompanied by a tight siege, has failed to reach its goals, but has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people.

The Saudi-led coalition has been preventing fuel shipments from reaching Yemen, while looting the impoverished nation’s resources.

The UN says more than 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger. The world body also refers to the situation in Yemen as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories.

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