Houthi missile strikes on Riyadh's airport killed three people and damaged a Saudia Airlines plane on Thursday, Saudi authorities said Friday, as Yemen's Houthi group escalates attacks and tries to shut down Saudi airspace. The war has become the fiercest front in the wider regional conflict triggered by the US and Israeli attack on Iran, with Red Sea shipping lanes and Gulf oil supplies increasingly at risk.
Thursday's attacks on Riyadh airport killed three people and injured several others, Saudi authorities said on Friday. The strikes damaged a Saudia Airlines plane and sent smoke billowing over the airport, leading several airlines to cancel flights to the Saudi capital days before it is due to host a major meeting of global oil chiefs. Saudia Airlines said one of those killed on Thursday was one of its employees.
The Houthis had already killed three people with strikes on airports in the kingdom earlier this week. The group has announced repeated rounds of ballistic missile fire at Saudi Arabia, proclaiming it would shut down Saudi airspace and warning workers at oil facilities that it would strike those too.
Saudi Arabia strikes back in Sanaa
Saudi airstrikes hit Houthi targets in the Yemeni capital Sanaa overnight, Houthi officials and affiliated media said, part of an intensifying air campaign aimed at reversing the group's recent territorial gains, its threats to international shipping, and its attacks on the kingdom. A Saudi-led coalition backing government forces in Yemen said it had destroyed three missile launch platforms used by the Houthis and warned it would respond firmly to attacks on civilians.
The Saudi civil aviation authority said air traffic at Riyadh airport had returned to normal, and flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed a gradual resumption of flights, including from some Middle Eastern airlines.
Fighting grinds on inside Yemen
The Houthis have encircled Yemeni government forces in Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city, and are trying to defend positions on the Red Sea coast against a Saudi-backed offensive. On Monday, government forces took back territory around the Bab el-Mandeb coastline after intense Saudi airstrikes, and fighting there continues. Houthi forces have also cut off a key road connecting Taiz, a city of more than half a million people, with a garrison of thousands of pro-government fighters, through advances in mountain districts.
A widening regional war
Yemen's civil war has rapidly become the fiercest front in a broader regional conflict triggered by the US and Israeli attack on Iran that started on February 28. The conflict is critical for global energy markets, as the Houthis fire on shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, further squeezing Gulf oil supplies while Iran partly blocks the Strait of Hormuz.
Last month, the Houthis staged a rapid advance down Yemen's Red Sea coast to take full control over the coastline around the strait, prompting Saudi Arabia to re-enter the long-dormant conflict and back a government counteroffensive. Saudi Arabia is now seeking assistance from Pakistan and Turkey, its partners in a mutual defence pact, to help ward off Houthi attacks, and has pushed for wider help from allies to reverse the group's gains inside Yemen.
Source: Investing.com
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