Yemen’s Armed Drones Attack Saudi Military Base

Date: 21 May 2019 - 21:41

News ID: ۶۶۲۶۲

SANAA (Dispatches) -- Yemen’s Houthi fighters and their allies in the army said Tuesday they attacked a Saudi airport and military base with a bomb-laden drone, an assault acknowledged by the kingdom.
The Al-Masirah satellite news channel said they targeted the airport in Najran with a Qasef-2K drone, striking an arms depot. Najran, 840 kilometers (525 miles) southwest of Riyadh, lies on the Saudi-Yemen border and has repeatedly been targeted by the Yemeni fighters.
A statement earlier on the state-run Saudi Press Agency quoted Saudi-led coalition spokesman Col. Turki al-Maliki as saying the Houthis "had tried to target” a site in Najran, without elaborating.
The New York Times last year reported that American intelligence analysts were based in Najran, assisting the Saudis and a U.S. Army Green Berets deployment on the border. The Pentagon referred questions to the U.S. military’s Central Command, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last week, the Houthis launched a coordinated drone attack on a Saudi oil pipeline.
On Sunday, the fighters warned that its attack on a major Saudi oil facility was the start of operations against 300 vital targets in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Yemen.
They said other planned targets include military headquarters and facilities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Last Tuesday, the Houthis launched a major operation against a strategic oil facility in Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the kingdom’s military aggression and siege of the impoverished country.
Following the attack, Saudi Arabia stopped pumping crude oil on the major pipeline across the country.
It came only two days after Saudi Arabia said two of its oil tankers were among those attacked in an unspecified "sabotage operation” off the coast of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates.
On Sunday, satellite imagery revealed the extent of damage to the oil facilities caused by the drone strikes. The Qatari television network Al Jazeera reported that the attacks had caused significant damage to Saudi energy giant Aramco's Pump Station 8.
The drone strikes reportedly caused a 4-meter rupture in one of the station's main oil pipes, causing severe leakage in an area of around a thousand square meters.
Saudi officials have confirmed that two oil pumping stations in Dawadmi and Afif provinces in the Riyadh region had been targeted and that oil flow in the east-west oil pipeline, which carries between 3 and 5 million barrels a day, had been brought to a halt.
Afif and Dawadmi are located about 850 kilometers from Sa'ada, Yemen's northernmost city.
The attack bears extra significance at this stage of the war because it indicates that Yemeni forces were able to fly their armed drones a long distance and carry out precision strikes and then fly them back while evading Saudi defenses all along.
The long-range drones open unlimited possibilities for Yemeni resistance forces, which have already surpassed all expectations by surviving the massive Saudi onslaught and mounted a potent response with an arsenal of ballistic missiles.