RIYADH (The Thursday Times) — Yemen’s Houthis said on Thursday they had attacked a pumping station on Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline and an oil facility in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, the latest in a string of claimed strikes on the kingdom’s energy network.
The group’s military spokesman said its forces had carried out two operations, the first aimed at pumping station No. 7 on the pipeline and the second at the Yanbu facility. He gave no details of the weapons used or of any damage. Saudi Arabia did not immediately confirm the claim, and there was no independent account of what, if anything, was hit.
Earlier on Thursday, the Saudi-led coalition said it had intercepted and destroyed a drone over the Eastern Province overnight and a second over the Riyadh region during the day. Its spokesman, Major General Turki al-Maliki, gave no further details in two brief statements.
A route around Hormuz
The 1,200km pipeline runs across the Arabian Peninsula from the oilfields of the east to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Since the war with Iran choked tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Riyadh has used it to move about 4 million barrels of crude a day to the Red Sea coast, roughly 4 per cent of global supply.
That has made it a target. On Monday, an official at the Saudi energy ministry said the pipeline had been struck in the Medina region, causing a “limited fire” that was put out, with no casualties and no effect on operations, according to state media. The line was shut for several days in September after drone attacks that Saudi Arabia said were launched from Iraq.
On Wednesday, the Houthis said they had struck a pumping station in Yanbu, while denying Saudi accusations that they had aimed drones at Mecca. The coalition said that day it had downed cruise missiles fired at Riyadh and drones aimed at Mecca and the south of the kingdom.
The strikes have drawn wide condemnation. The Group of Seven’s foreign ministers condemned them “in the strongest terms” this week and told Iran to stop arming the group, and Saudi Arabia is pressing the European Union to list the Houthis as a terrorist organisation, European officials said on Thursday. Pakistan’s army has said its commitment to Saudi security is non-negotiable.
