Houthi Forces Attack Saudi Aramco's Jazan Refinery
In back-to-back strikes on Monday and Tuesday, Yemen's Houthi rebels hit the Saudi refining complex at Jazan (Jizan) with drones and missiles, starting fires and taking the facility offline. It is the second time this year that the militant group has inflicted significant damage on the Jazan plant, one of the largest and most modern in the region.
Crude oil tank farms at Jazan and Abha were hit as well, according to energy-industry sourcing by the Wall Street Journal and satellite imaging of affected oil infrastructure sites.
Saudi outlet Al Arabiya released footage of apparent damage to civilian infrastructure in multiple locations, including Abha, Najran, Jazan and Khamis Mushait, all near the northwestern Yemeni border. Saudi Arabia's civil defense agency gave the all-clear for Jazan at about 2000 hours on Tuesday, with an advisory to local citizens to "avoid gathering and filming."
Industry sources told the Wall Street Journal that the attack had taken the Jazan refinery offline. The extent of the damage and the duration of the outage were not immediately known; NASA FIRMS infrared sensing detected indications of fire on the eastern half of the facility, an area primarily occupied by tank farms.
The strike on Jazan followed just hours after the Houthi group accused Saudi forces of conducting bombing runs over Houthi-controlled areas, including an alleged airstrike on a prison in al-Hazm, Yemen. Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree threatened at the time that "the ongoing Saudi aggression against Yemen will not go unpunished."
In a statement, the Saudi foreign ministry said that the attacks injured 73 civilians, including women and children, and it issued its "strongest condemnation and denunciation of the terrorist Houthi militia’s targeting of civilian and economic assets." Saudi forces are expected to retaliate with a military response, adding momentum to the Saudi return to conflict with the Houthi group after four long years of relative peace.
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Meanwhile, on the southern front, Houthi forces have been engaged in heavy fighting with Yemeni government troops west of Taiz, not far from the port of Mokha and the strait of Bab el-Mandeb. This choke point is the narrowest stretch of water in the southern Red Sea, and access to its shores would give Houthi forces an advantage in attacks on Saudi shipping. The group announced a "blockade" on Saudi energy ports in July, disrupting the routing for oil exports out of Saudi Aramco's Red Sea loading terminals.
Brent crude oil rose more than two percent after the news, settling north of $99.
