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Houthi missile and drone attacks have targeted several Saudi Arabian towns this week, injuring more than a dozen people in the south as the Iranian-backed movement keeps up a days-long assault on the kingdom that has jolted oil markets and opened a new front in the Middle East conflict.
In a sign of Riyadh attempting to demonstrate “business as usual”, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman went ahead on Tuesday with a long-planned state visit to Egypt to meet President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
The two leaders committed to ensuring freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea, Egyptian state media said. Sisi also stressed Egypt’s support for measures taken by Saudi Arabia to protect its security and stability and “to reach a comprehensive and sustainable political solution to the Yemen crisis”.
But Riyadh is facing a deepening crisis as the Houthis have dragged the kingdom back into conflict, while an attack by Iranian-aligned militants in Iraq last week forced Saudi Arabia to shut its East-West oil pipeline, vital for its export crude since Iran throttled shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Houthis said they had fired dozens of drones and missiles at King Khalid air base in Khamis Mushait on Monday, in response to more than 300 air strikes against the rebels in Yemen over the past five days.
According to Saudi military spokesman Major General Turki al-Malki, the Houthi attacks targeted the Saudi towns of Abha and Taif as well as Khamis Mushait, wounded 13 civilians and damaged seven houses. The wounded, he said, suffered “minor to moderate injuries”.
In the early hours of Tuesday, residents of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second city, Yanbu, where vital oil facilities are based, Taif and Al-Ulah were woken by a shrill alert on their phones warning them of a threat in their area and urging them to follow safety instructions. A second phone message later told them the threat had passed.
There were no reports of attacks on those cities. Similar phone alerts went off later on Tuesday, at about 1pm, in Jeddah and Mecca, home to Islam’s holiest site. While the warnings caused some nervousness, Jeddah residents said life was going on as normal.
Since reigniting a more than decade-long war with Saudi Arabia in July, the Houthis have targeted energy facilities in the kingdom and attacked Saudi tankers. Last week, they launched a lightning offensive southwards along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, pushing back Saudi-backed forces aligned to the Yemeni government and tightening their grip over the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
The strategic waterway has become crucial to Riyadh’s ability to avoid the Strait of Hormuz and export oil to Asia, and is also vital for global shipping between east and west through the Suez Canal.
The multiple attacks on Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, and the Houthis’ advance along the Red Sea coast have pushed up crude prices to their highest levels since mid-May.
They have also shattered a four-year ceasefire between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis that had brought relative calm to Yemen’s civil war.
Riyadh had intervened in the conflict in 2015 to lead an Arab coalition against the Houthis after the rebels seized Sana’a, the capital, and ousted the internationally recognised government.
Before the truce took hold in 2022, the Houthis fired regular missile and drone barrages into the kingdom, most of which were intercepted by Saudi air defences.
But the Houthis’ latest escalation comes as stocks of interceptor missiles across the region have been depleted because of Iran’s retaliatory attacks since the US and Israel launched their war against the Islamic republic.
