Yemeni forces fire ballistic missile at Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah airport

Yemeni army forces and allied fighters from Popular Committees have reportedly launched a locally designed and manufactured ballistic missile towards an area deep inside Saudi Arabia in response to the Riyadh regime’s atrocious aerial bombardments against the crisis-hit Arab country.

Yemeni soldiers and their allies fired a Borkan-1 (Volcano-1) missile towards King Abdulaziz International Airport, located 19 kilometers north of the western Saudi port city of Jeddah, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.

A military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, later told the official Saba news agency that the 12.5-meter-long missile had hit its target accurately and left massive destruction at the airport.

Saudi media outlets, however, reported that the kingdom’s missile systems intercepted and destroyed the solid propellant and Scud-type missile before it could cause any damage.

They said the projectile was launched at 9 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) on Thursday from Yemen’s mountainous northwestern area of Sa’ada.

The Saudi military also claimed that the Yemeni missile was fired toward the holy city of Mecca, but the Houthi Ansarullah movement has rejected the claim.

Fars news agency quoted an informed Houthi source as saying that the missile was aimed at King Abdulaziz International Airport close to Jeddah, which hosts the kingdom’s royal forces as well as a group of American troops.

Also on Thursday, the media bureau of the operations command in Yemen said army soldiers had targeted a gathering of militiamen loyal to resigned president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in the Aqaba district of the northern province of Jawf, leaving scores of the Saudi-backed armed men dead.

An armored vehicle and battle tank belonging to the mercenaries were also destroyed in the attack.

Separately, a number of Saudi soldiers were killed and injured when Yemeni forces and Popular Committees fighters struck al-Kars base in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border region of Jizan.

Saudi Arabia has been engaged in the deadly campaign against Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to bring back the former Yemeni government to power and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The United Nations puts the death toll from the military aggression at about 10,000.

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