Houthi missiles and drones hit four Saudi cities and pause energy work

Yemen’s Houthi movement fired ballistic missiles and drones at four cities in southern Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, 8 September. The Saudi-led coalition said 73 people were wounded, including women and children. Fires broke out at energy sites. Some operations stopped while crews put the blazes out and checked the damage.

Major General Turki al-Maliki, the coalition spokesman, named Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran. He called the wave a dangerous escalation and said the coalition would act against the sources of the threat. The Saudi energy ministry said several energy facilities and installations in the south were hit early on Tuesday. It confirmed injuries among citizens and residents and a temporary halt in some operations.

The Houthi military spokesman described a broad offensive against what he called the de facto OPEC leader. He said the group targeted Saudi Aramco sites in Abha, Najran and Jazan, and an air base in Khamis Mushait. Houthi-run Al Masirah television carried the claim. Saba, the Houthi news agency, said a statement on a large-scale operation would follow.

Jazan holds a 400,000-barrel-a-day refinery, one of the kingdom’s larger plants, plus associated power and storage. The Financial Times had already reported a strike on Jazan oil facilities on Monday. People familiar with Tuesday’s damage told the paper the major refinery was aflame and offline, and that gas and oil storage at a power plant in Abha was hit. Output at Jazan had already been reduced by earlier Houthi strikes. Aramco did not issue a public comment on Tuesday. Amin Nasser, the company’s chief executive, said last month that earlier attacks had caused some interruptions to oil production but no material operational or financial impact.

NASA satellite imagery showed a thick cloud of black smoke over the Jazan refinery and a column of white smoke from an oil distribution centre in Abha, Reuters reported. No confirmed photographs from the ground were released. Witnesses could not be reached in a country where media is tightly controlled.

The attacks come as the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised Yemeni government presses a counteroffensive against the Houthis, who hold most of Yemen’s populated areas including Sanaa. A four-year truce in Yemen’s civil war has broken down in recent weeks. The Houthis sit in Iran’s network of allied armed groups. The United States and Israel opened a war against Iran in late February. That campaign, and Houthi pressure on the Red Sea, has already squeezed two of the world’s main energy chokepoints.

Oil prices moved back toward $100 a barrel after the strikes. Brent traded near $97 to $98 during the day. About 45 percent of China’s oil and gas imports have moved through Hormuz in recent months. Gulf LNG shipments have already fallen sharply. A second front against Saudi export plant in the south adds a new risk to that map.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said Riyadh would take all necessary measures to defend its sovereignty and demanded that the Houthis stop. The energy ministry said specialised teams were containing fires and assessing damage. No death toll was published with the injury figure of 73. The size of that wounded list, and the spread across four cities, put Tuesday among the largest Houthi attacks on the kingdom since the Iran war began in February.

The operational question now is how long Jazan and the Abha bulk plant stay offline, and whether Riyadh answers inside Yemen or across the wider Gulf. The coalition has promised a response. The Houthis have promised more. Energy buyers will watch both the satellite smoke and the next tanker list out of the Red Sea and the Gulf.