The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen announced Thursday, December 23, the destruction of a drone bomb launched towards an airport in the south of the kingdom, without causing any casualties, the Houthi rebels having multiplied the attacks in recent months .
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Riyadh has been working in Yemen since 2015 to support government forces at war for seven years against the rebels. The latter, close to Iran, regularly launch attacks from Yemen towards Saudi territory. “A trapped drone that tried to target Abha International Airport was destroyed“, Announced the coalition in a statement quoted by the official press agency SPA. The interception of the machine did “no casualtiesWith only shrapnel strewn around the airport. An airport official assured AFP that “no flight has been canceled“.
The coalition has not directly blamed the Houthi rebels, but the latter have recently stepped up their drone-bomb and ballistic missile attacks on Saudi Arabia. In October, one of them injured ten at Jazan airport in the south of the kingdom, days after a thwarted attack targeting Abha airport, state media reported. In August, the same airport had already been hit by a drone, injuring eight people and damaging a civilian plane.
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Earlier Thursday, the US Navy said it had seized 1,400 AK-47 assault rifles and ammunition from a fishing boat it said it left Iran for the Yemeni rebels. Tehran recognizes its political support for the rebels but denies providing them with weapons. In recent days, the conflict has escalated as the Saudi coalition has carried out airstrikes on the rebel-held capital Sana’a since 2014.
The coalition announced on Wednesday that it had targeted a Houthi military camp in Sana’a and destroyed seven drones and weapons warehouses, according to SPA. According to the UN, the war in Yemen will have caused the death of 377,000 people by the end of 2021, more than half of them due to the indirect consequences of the conflict, including lack of drinking water, hunger and disease.