Houthis attack Saudi Aramco refinery and Red Sea port as regional tensions persist
Yemen's Houthi movement said on Sunday it attacked a Saudi Aramco refinery in Jazan with a drone, and separately struck the Red Sea port of Mocha with missiles and drones. Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry confirmed a fire at an Aramco facility in Jazan with no casualties, stating the fire was extinguished without describing its cause. The Houthis said the Aramco strike was retaliation for Saudi drone incursions into Yemeni airspace over the provinces of Hajjah and Saada.
Yemen's Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group targeted the Aramco refinery in the southwestern Saudi city of Jazan using a drone on Sunday. Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry confirmed a fire broke out at an Aramco facility without casualties and said the blaze was extinguished, though officials did not publicly identify its cause. The attacks follow Saudi Arabia's signing of a defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan two days earlier, according to Reuters.
A Yemeni government official, Fayed al-Noman, assistant undersecretary of the information ministry, said the Houthis also fired missiles and drones at Mocha port on the Red Sea. The port is one of the main facilities under the internationally recognized Yemeni government, renovated in recent years to handle shipping that avoids Houthi-held ports at Hodeida. The Houthis later said they fired "a large number of ballistic missiles and drones" targeting military deployments and warehouses in the area, according to the Associated Press.
The dual attacks are the latest in a sustained series of Houthi missile and drone strikes against Saudi Arabia and Red Sea shipping. The escalation raises concerns about a wider reignition of Yemen's civil war, more than four years after a 2022 truce halted major fighting in the country.