Yemen’s attacks on Riyadh’s int’l airport claim three lives
Saudi Arabia said on Friday that three people were killed including a pilot were killed in attacks on Riyadh’s international airport, after Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement claimed a series of attacks targeting the facility.
The conflict between Ansarullah and Saudi Arabia has widened, with the resistance fighters staging repeated attacks on Saudi targets since they began a lightning offensive just across the border.
While seizing large swathes of territory along the Red Sea coast in Yemen, the Ansarullah has also attacked Saudi transport hubs, oil facilities and other civilian targets in the world’s largest crude exporter.
The Saudi civil aviation authority said two attacks on Thursday on the Saudi capital’s airport and a Saudia Airlines plane there “resulted in the martyrdom of three citizens".
Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni forces it backs have struggled to contain Ansarullah’s advance, despite a counter-offensive aimed at recapturing territory including the area around the Bab al-Mandab strait that is crucial to global energy flows.
But a regional source told AFP on Friday that Riyadh would not bow to the Ansarullah’s “military blackmail” and would not agree to a truce until the Saudi-backed forces regain all territory it has lost in recent weeks.
The attacks forced diplomats stationed in the Saudi capital to shelter in place and international schools to take safety measures, as explosions echoed across the city on Thursday.
The Ansarullah had already controlled the capital Sana’a and most of Yemen’s major population centers since the start of the war in 2014.
Riyadh’s military coalition intervened to support the government the following year.