Yemen rebels claim attack on Saudi oil facility in Jiddah

Tension in Gulf escalates as Yemen’s Houthi rebels said they struck a Saudi oil facility in the port city of Jiddah on Monday with a new cruise missile, just hours after the kingdom finished hosting its virtual Group of 20 leaders summit.The kingdom did not immediately acknowledge any attack as videos on social media suggested a fire struck a Saudi Arabian Oil Co. facility in Jiddah before dawn.Brig. Gen. Yehia Sarie, a Houthi military spokesman, tweeted that the rebels fired a new Quds-2 cruise missile at the facility. He posted a satellite image online that matched Aramco’s North Jiddah Bulk Plant, where oil products are stored in tanks.

That facility is just southeast of Jiddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport, a major airfield that handles incoming Muslim pilgrims en route to nearby Mecca. Saudi state-run media did not immediately acknowledge the Houthi claim. Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s oil giant that now has a sliver of its worth traded publicly on the stock market, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its stock traded down slightly early Monday on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange as crude oil prices remained steady above $40 a barrel.

A Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Iranian-backed Houthis since March 2015, months after the rebels seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. The war has ground into a stalemate since, with Saudi Arabia facing international criticism for its airstrikes killing civilians. The Quds-1 was used in a missile-and-drone strike on the heart of the kingdom’s oil industry in 2019 that shook global energy markets. The U.S. believes Iran carried out that attack amid a series of escalating incidents last year between Tehran and Washington, something Tehran denies.