Yemen’s Houthi group has claimed responsibility for a drone attack on a Saudi Aramco oil facility in Jizan, a Saudi port city on the Red Sea, which set a refinery ablaze. Yemen’s Al Masirah TV said the attack was in response to Saudi drone strikes on Yemen’s Saada and Hajjah provinces, according to Al Jazeera Online. BD Global Times could not independently verify the competing accounts.
Earlier, the Saudi energy ministry said fire service workers had put out a fire that broke out around dawn at a facility of the Saudi Aramco refinery in the Red Sea port of Jizan, near the Yemen border, and that there were no casualties.
Analysts see the attack on the Aramco facility — coming just a day after the Mecca defence pact was signed between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey — as a major escalation. Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sanaa, Yusuf Mawri, said Ansarullah, or Houthi, officials had warned that Turkey or Pakistan would face severe consequences if they violated Yemen’s sovereignty or joined Saudi Arabia in any hostile activity.
The attack sent a clear message to the new defence alliance that the Houthis would continue their military activity and target Saudi Arabia’s most important assets — Aramco’s oil facilities and oil-transport infrastructure. They have also continued attacks on Saudi-aligned Yemeni government forces in the eastern governorates of Marib, Taiz and Hadramawt. Observers believe that unless the 12-year conflict is resolved through talks in the near future, it will intensify. The United Nations and various states have condemned the attack.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report