Yemeni Boat Targets Saudi Jizan Petroleum Products Platform

By Staff, Agencies

A fire has broken out near a floating platform of an oil distribution station in Saudi Arabia’s southern region of Jizan, after Saudi forces purportedly destroyed two explosive-laden boats believed to have been launched by Yemeni fighters.

The Saudi Ministry of Energy, in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency [SPA], said on Friday it dealt with the blaze.

Other than the damage caused by the fire to the floating hoses in the platform, no injuries were reported, the statement added.

The purported bomb-laden boat attack came as the Saudi-led coalition involved in a devastating military campaign against Yemen claimed on Thursday that it had thwarted a Yemeni drone strike.

The coalition's spokesperson, Brigadier General Turki al-Malki, said a bomb-laden drone launched by Yemeni Ansarullah revolutionaries toward the kingdom's southern region was intercepted and destroyed.

The Saudi-led coalition alleged earlier in the day that it had destroyed a Yemeni bomb-laden drone before it could reach its target in Saudi Arabia.

Yemeni drones have previously targeted oil facilities in Jizan in response to the kingdom’s relentless bombardment of the impoverished nation.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a military onslaught against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project [ACLED], a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives for over the past five years.

The Ansarullah movement, backed by armed forces, has been defending Yemen against the Saudi-led alliance, preventing the aggressors from fulfilling the objectives of the atrocious war.