SANAA, Yemen — The Houthi-run Yemeni Armed Forces said Sunday that their forces carried out four operations against Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones. In a statement posted on X, spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said the first operation struck King Khalid International Airport, Aramco storage tanks and the financial center in Riyadh.
The statement said the operations were carried out with a number of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. It said the Riyadh strikes were “direct and precise” and caused “extensive damage to the targeted sites,” claims that could not be independently verified.
A second operation targeted the Aramco facility in Abqaiq, the statement said, claiming a direct strike that set fires at the targeted sites.
The third operation targeted Saudi troop concentrations under the command of Saudi officer Faris Al-Shammari east of Al-Jawf Governorate and in the Madghal district of Marib Governorate, and the fourth targeted concentrations under Saudi officer Badr Al-Harbi in the Al-Madaribah area of Lahj Governorate, the statement said, claiming a large number of dead and wounded in both.
A Response to Strikes in Yemen
The statement framed the operations as a response to what it called Saudi massacres at Al-Hadara Market in Al-Wazi’iyah and in residential buildings in Bani Hashish, which it said killed or wounded more than 120 people, most of them women and children. On Saturday, airstrikes near Sanaa killed at least 27 people, most of them women and children, a spokesman for the Houthi-run Health Ministry said.
Saudi Arabia described a far more limited outcome in Riyadh. The Saudi-led coalition said its air defenses intercepted and destroyed two ballistic missiles launched toward the capital, along with two cruise missiles in Riyadh and the southern region. The Energy Ministry said falling shrapnel from an attempted attack caused minor damage to an Aramco administrative building in the financial district. No injuries or fatalities were reported.
Background
Yemen’s civil war has grown more intense since a yearslong truce fell apart over the summer. The war began in 2014. The Iran-backed Houthis seized Sanaa that year and drove out the internationally recognized government, and a Saudi-led coalition then formed to back the ousted government. Today the Houthis hold Sanaa and much of the north and west, and Saudi-backed forces are based mainly in the south and east. United Nations figures put the war’s death toll at 150,000 or more.
Further operations would follow, the statement said, until the aggression stops and the siege of Yemen is lifted — what it called “the equation of siege for siege and escalation for escalation.”
“The Yemeni Armed Forces will continue their military operations deep inside Saudi territory to avenge the blood of our people, until the Saudi aggressor is deterred.”
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