Houthis strike Saudi airport again

International Desk: Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked an airport in southern Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, wounding 26 people in the latest escalation of a conflict that threatens to further strain relations between the United States and Iran.

A Houthi official, Mohamed Abdul Salam, said the strike was in retaliation for the Saudi-led coalition’s continued “aggression and blockade,” against Yemen.

Saudi Arabia, which considers the Houthis Iranian proxies, described the attack as a “continuation of the Iranian regime’s support and practice of cross-border terrorism” and vowed to retaliate.

The violence has escalated in the last few weeks, imperiling a brittle cease-fire agreement, and the Saudi-led military coalition has tightened its blockade of a major seaport and the airport in Sana, the Houthi-controlled capital. On Monday, the official Saudi Press Agency reported that its coalition had “intensified” air raids on the Houthis in northwest Yemen.

In response, the Houthis, who receive support from Iran, have carried out attacks in Saudi Arabia in the past few weeks by drone, missile and land.

The war, now in its fifth year, has devastated Yemen, killing thousands of civilians and creating a food shortage that has made millions hungry.

But the recent escalation has also inflamed tensions between Iran and the United States, which is allied with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As the United States and Iran have exchanged increasingly aggressive rhetoric and dialed up their military posturing, the Houthis have attacked Saudi oil installations and airports.

The Saudis have blamed Iran for the attacks.

The Yemen war is at the center of a skirmish in Washington between Congress and the Trump administration, which declared a national emergency to get around Congress’s objections to selling billions of dollars of arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The coalition has repeatedly used American-supplied precision-guided bombs to strike Yemeni civilians.

A bipartisan group of senators is trying to block the deal.

The Houthis have regularly launched missiles into Saudi Arabia since they began battling the Saudi-led coalition in 2015, but had reined in their strikes as peace talks led by the United Nations progressed late last year.

Source: Agencies


risingbd/June 14, 2019/Mukul