Saudi Arabia says 73 wounded as Houthis attack civilian and energy sites

Saudi Arabia has accused Yemen’s Houthi rebels of launching attacks on civilian and economic sites in the kingdom, wounding at least 73 civilians, including women and children.

The accusation came on Tuesday as fighting intensified in Yemen, where the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government has launched a counteroffensive to retake territory from the Iran-backed Houthis.

Major-General Turki al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, said in a statement that the Houthi attacks had hit civilian and economic sites in the provinces of Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jizan and Najran.

Al-Maliki described the attacks as a “dangerous escalation” and a “blatant violation” of Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty, warning that they posed a direct threat to the kingdom’s citizens and residents.

He said the coalition would take “all necessary operational measures” to confront the attacks and act against the sources of the threat.

The Saudi Ministry of Energy said in a separate statement that several “energy sector facilities and installations” in southern areas of the kingdom were hit early Tuesday.

The attacks wounded a “number of citizens and residents” and sparked “fires at several locations”, forcing a “temporary halt in some operations”, the statement said.

Earlier, the group had accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out an air strike on a prison in al-Hazm, in the northern al-Jawf governorate, and killing at least seven people. It said the “ongoing Saudi aggression against Yemen will not go unpunished”.