A fire broke out early Sunday at a facility belonging to Saudi state oil company Aramco in the coastal city of Jizan, with Saudi authorities saying the blaze was later extinguished and no casualties were reported.
Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry said the fire occurred at an Aramco refinery facility and that authorities had completed the necessary procedures to deal with the incident. The ministry did not provide a cause for the fire.
“The competent authorities are completing the necessary procedures to deal with the incident,” the ministry said in a statement.
Yahya Saree, military spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi rebels, claimed the group had carried out a drone attack on the facility.
The group “succeeded in targeting the Aramco refinery in Jizan with a drone, and the strike was precise”, Saree wrote on X. He said the attack was carried out in response to what he described as Saudi Arabia’s “breach of the airspace of the provinces of Saada and Hajjah” with drones.
There was no immediate response from Saudi authorities to the Houthi claim.
In a separate statement issued Sunday, Saree said Houthi forces had also targeted Saudi-backed forces and weapons depots in the Al-Makha, or Mokha, area on Yemen’s western coast.
The Houthi statement said the operation used “a large number of ballistic missiles and drones” and resulted in the destruction of weapons and equipment and the killing and wounding of dozens of people, including Saudis. The claims could not be independently verified.
The incidents come amid renewed fighting between the Houthis and Yemen’s internationally recognised government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, after years of relative calm following a 2022 truce.
Jizan, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast near the Yemeni border, has previously been targeted in Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure. The group also claimed attacks on Aramco facilities in Jizan and oil installations in Yanbu last month.
Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser said last week that recent attacks on the company’s facilities had caused some production interruptions but that operations could be restored quickly. He said the attacks had not had a material operational or financial impact.
The Houthis seized control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and control large parts of the country’s north, while the internationally recognised government holds much of the south.
The group announced a blockade targeting Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea last month and threatened shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
The Jizan incident was reported separately from reports of an explosion and fires in Jubail Industrial City in eastern Saudi Arabia. Anadolu Agency reported that a loud explosion was heard in the Jubail region, while regional reports said gas facilities had caught fire. It was not immediately clear whether the incidents were connected.
The latest escalation comes days after Saudi Arabia signed a trilateral defence agreement with Türkiye and Pakistan in Mecca. Under the pact, an armed attack on one of the three countries would be treated as an attack on all three.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Saturday that the agreement was not directed at Iran.
“There is no common threat that we have put in writing,” Fidan told Türkiye’s state-run Anadolu Agency.
