Houthis Say They Fired Missile at Saudi Aramco Center

Yemen's armed Houthi movement launched a ballistic missile at a Saudi Aramco facility in Saudi Arabia's southwestern Jizan province on Monday, the group's al-Masirah TV reported, but a Saudi-led coalition said the rocket fell in the open desert.

The Houthis, an Iran-allied group that holds much of Yemen including the capital Sanaa, have fired a series of missiles into the kingdom in recent months, part of a three-year-old conflict in Yemen widely seen as a proxy battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A U.S.-backed military alliance intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to fight against the Houthis on behalf of the government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi, who lives in exile in Riyadh. Iran and the Houthis dismiss Saudi accusations that Tehran arms the group.

Coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki said Saudi air defence forces had tracked the rocket but that it landed in an uninhabited area, according to a report from the official Saudi Press Agency.

The Houthis fired a salvo of missiles at Riyadh last week, with one falling short of the capital and another intercepted by Saudi air defence forces, Malki said at the time.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch, Editing by William Maclean)