Yemen’s Houthi movement targeted Abha and Jizan airports in southern Saudi Arabia with drone attacks on Sunday, the group’s Al-Masirah TV said. There was no immediate Saudi confirmation of the attacks. The Iran-aligned Houthis have stepped up missile and drone attacks on Saudi cities in the past month. In response the Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen has targeted the group’s military sites around the capital Sanaa and Hodeidah port city.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the United States, in a joint statement published by the Saudi Embassy in Washington on Sunday, voiced concern about the escalation in Houthi attacks – without any mention of the latest drone launches. It also voiced concern about “dangers posed by Iranian destabilising activity to peace and security both in Yemen and the broader region, citing attacks on oil tankers in Gulf waters.
Tehran has denied involvement in the tanker attacks, which no one has claimed responsibility for. The Western-backed Sunni Muslim coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervened in Yemen in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognised government that was ousted from power in Sanaa by the Houthis in late 2014. The escalation in violence threatens a U.N.-sponsored deal for a ceasefire and troop withdrawal from Hodeidah, which became the focus of the war last year when the coalition tried to seize the port, the Houthis’ main supply line and a lifeline for millions of Yemenis.
The statement by the quartet called on all Yemeni parties to engage constructively with U.N. special envoy Martin Griffiths to accelerate implementation of the agreement. The deal reached at peace talks in Sweden last December had stalled for months before the Houthis unilaterally withdrew from three Red Sea ports in Hodeidah. The Saudi-led alliance has yet to verify the redeployment or meet it by pulling back pro-coalition troops massed on the outskirts of Hodeidah.
Source: Reuters