SANAA: Yemen’s Houthi rebels said Tuesday they targeted a Saudi oil tanker in the Red Sea with ballistic missiles for violating a blockade on the kingdom’s ports announced by the Iran-backed group.
Saudi Arabia had yet to comment on the Houthis’ claim, but reported having intercepted drones targeting oil facilities in its east, blaming pro-Iran militias in Iraq.
“The targeting of the Saudi vessel came after it ignored warnings,” a Houthi military spokesman said, identifying the ship as the NCC Ghazal and adding it had been “forced to turn back”.
The website MarineTraffic, owned by maritime tracking firm Kpler, listed the Ghazal as a Saudi-flagged tanker whose last known location was the port of Yanbu, the terminus of an important oil pipeline on the kingdom’s Red Sea coast.
Last week, the Iran-backed Houthis declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia and have since claimed attacks targeting Saudi tankers and oil infrastructure.
The blockade has threatened Saudi Arabia’s ability to get its supplies to the world following Iran’s parallel blockade of the Strait of Hormuz after hostilities resumed the Middle East war, cutting off the kingdom’s only other maritime route.
Riyadh last week struck Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the threats to Red Sea shipping.
A Saudi-led military coalition had fought against the Houthis in support of Yemen’s internationally recognised government after war broke out in the country in 2015.
The latest flare-up marks the first time in years that two sides have traded blows, threatening a 2022 truce in the previous conflict that has held despite expiring.
A spokesman for the Saudi defence ministry said late Tuesday that “aerial defences intercepted and destroyed several drones that attempted to target oil installations” in the country’s east.
The spokesman, Turki al-Maliki, added that “these new terrorist attacks were launched from Iraqi territory and carried out by militias linked to Iran”.
It was the second day in a row Riyadh had blamed Iran-backed groups in Iraq for launching attacks.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations had accused pro-Iran militias in Iraq of launching waves of attacks on their territory earlier in the Middle East war, but the groups haven’t claimed any attacks in the region since the resumption of hostilities.
On Monday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella network of Iran-backed Shia militias, called the Saudi accusations “fabrications” seeking “to justify their inability to respond to the painful Yemeni strikes”.
