Yemen’s Houthi fighters hit Saudi arms depot

Yemen’s Houthi fighters said Tuesday they launched a bomb-laden drone into Saudi Arabia, targeting an arms depot of a military base located at an airport.

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has acknowledged the attack.

In a statement early Tuesday morning, KSA said that Yemen’s Houthi fighters have launched a bomb-laden drone targeting civilian infrastructure in a city along the kingdom’s border to Yemen.

Saudi Press Agency quoted Saudi-led Coalition spokesperson Colonel Turki Al Maliki as saying the Houthis “had tried to target” the site in Najran.

The statement did not elaborate, but used a word in Arabic that often refers to hospitals, power plants and schools.

It was not clear if there were any injuries or what the extent of damage was.

In the drone attack, the Houthis’ Al-Masirah satellite news channel said early Tuesday they targeted the airport in Najran with a Qasef-2K drone, striking an “arms depot.” Najran, 840 kilometers (525 miles) southwest of Riyadh, lies on the Saudi-Yemen border and has repeatedly been targeted by the Iran-allied Houthis.

The attack on the Saudi city of Najran came a day after it was reported that Saudi Arabia shot down two ballistic missiles, one in Taif, 50 km away from Makkah, and the other in Jeddah.

The missiles were fired by the Houthis according to Al Arabiya news channel.

The Saudi-owned satellite news channel said Yemen’s Houthi fighters fired two missiles into the kingdom that later were intercepted.

Al Arabiya reported on Monday that the two missiles were intercepted over the city of Taif and the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

The drone attack on Tuesday came as Iran announced it has quadrupled its uranium-enrichment production capacity amid tensions with the U.S., underscored by an exchange of threats and taunts Monday on Twitter between President Donald Trump and Iran’s foreign minister.

Iranian nuclear officials made a point to stress that the uranium would be enriched only to the 3.67% limit set under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, making it usable for a power plant but far below what’s needed for an atomic weapon.

But by increasing production, Iran soon will exceed the stockpile limitations set by the accord. Tehran has set a July 7 deadline for Europe to set new terms for the deal, or it will enrich closer to weapons-grade levels in a Middle East already on edge. The Trump administration has deployed bombers and an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf over still-unspecified threats from Iran.