Yemeni forces have fired ballistic missiles at facilities belonging to the Saudi state oil giant Aramco in the kingdom’s southwest.
The retaliatory attack took place on Friday, hitting targets in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan region and causing considerable damage to the Aramco facilities there, Yemen’s al-Masirah television reported.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency confirmed the attack, saying a projectile fired from Yemen had caused a fire at a power relay facility in the kingdom's south. The fire in Najran was put out without casualties, the report said, without giving further details.
Aramco, however, said all of its oil, gas and refining plants were operating as normal. All installations in the kingdom are safe, the company said in a statement.
Earlier, the Yemeni Saba news agency cited “an unidentified military source” as saying a single missile was fired into Saudi Arabia, causing extensive damage to Aramco facilities.
Saudi Arabia frequently says it intercepts missiles fired from Yemen.
The Saudi military has been pounding Yemen since March last year to undermine Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.
Nearly 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Riyadh’s military aggression which lacks any international mandate.
Also on Friday, Saudi fighters struck residential areas in the Baqim district of the northwestern Yemen province of Sa’ada, killing 11 people.
A day earlier, the fighters had hit a bazaar in the district, killing seven people and injuring 10 others, many of whom are in critical condition.
On Thursday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein said the Saudi military was using cluster bombs against residential areas in Yemen in violation of international law, blaming the Riyadh regime for most of the civilian casualties in its impoverished southern neighbor.