Saudi Arabia was forced to extend the suspension of all flights to and from its main international airport in Riyadh until next Saturday after a further round of Houthi missile attacks caused more damage and left one person dead.
Some airlines, including Gulf Air and Bahrain Air, had already said they were cancelling flights until next Saturday. More missiles were fired at Saudi Arabian cities by the Houthis on Monday, Saudi Arabia’s military spokesperson said.
The Gulf nation announced it was suspending flights from Riyadh, its second busiest airport, after Houthi missiles killed 13 people on Saturday and left more than 300 injured. Saudi state television broadcast CCTV footage that showed passengers deluged in smoke and falling masonry as they queued at the airport terminal to board a plane just as the Houthi missile struck.
The country has pressed ahead with the 25th WPC Energy Conference in Riyadh, hoping to project an image of normality. But some senior oil executives did not attend or appeared virtually.
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An urgent review is under way as to how Houthi missiles are repeatedly penetrating badly stretched Saudi air defences. Schoolchildren and some office workers were advised to work from home. The Houthis have also targeted the city of Khamis Mushait, and the King Fahd International Airport in Dammam.
Interceptor missiles are needed to protect Government buildings, oil facilities and infrastructure hubs across a wide geographic area. The Houthis have said they will attack Saudi airports across the country.
Houthi attacks since last month have targeted fuel tanks at Riyadh airport and its affiliated warehouses, destroying a parked Airbus A320 passenger plane and damaging at least five other aircraft.
Saudi Arabia’s predicament comes after it re-entered Yemen’s civil war to push the Houthis from the vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait oil route and stop the group from making further gains after its sudden advances in September.
Fighting has continued in and around Taiz, Yemen’s third city and the most populous governorate, with Saudi planes mounting eight separate strikes on any assembly of Houthi forces. As many as 60 fighters died on Sunday from both sides.
The governor of Taiz, Nabil Shamsan, on Sunday issued an urgent call to lift the Houthi siege and warned that a shortage of medicines meant the city would soon run out of emergency surgical and intensive care services.
Overall, the Houthis claimed the Saudis had mounted 124 raids on Sunday. The Saudis are seeking to locate Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the reclusive leader of the Houthis, with rumours of his assassination repeatedly circulating, but Saudi Arabia does not seem to have contemporary intelligence on his precise whereabouts either in the capital Sana’a or in its stronghold of Saada.
On the diplomatic front, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, spoke to the Saudi foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan, on Sunday to see if there was a way iIran could act as a mediator between the Saudis and the Houthis, a group Iran has trained and armed.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthi Political Bureau, claimed Saudi Arabia accepted the mediation offered by Iran and proposed first a one-month truce, and then a two-week truce, but the Houthis had rejected both offers.
A meeting of the UN security council in New York on Tuesday is expected to debate a resolution calling the Houthis a foreign terrorist organisation. – Guardian
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