Yemeni drones hit world’s largest refinery in Saudi Arabia

Drones have hit two oil facilities of Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Aramco in the country’s east, causing huge fires before dawn on Saturday.

A spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry said in a statement that the attacks targeted two Aramco factories in Abqaiq and Khurais. 

The statement did not identify the source of the attack, but Houthi fighters and their allies in Yemen’s army have carried out similar attacks in recent months in retaliation for the kingdom’s airstrikes in the impoverished nation. 

This video shows a new perspective, albeit from further away. The fires appear larger than in previous videos but no explosions are audible.

I have confirmed the exact location in a residential area West of the Aramco compound but will not be sharing it due to privacy concerns.276:20 AM – Sep 14, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy19 people are talking about this

Abqaiq, about 60 km (37 miles) southwest of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, contains the world’s largest oil processing plant. Most Saudi oil exported from the Persian Gulf is processed there.

The incident comes nearly a month after Saudi Aramco’s oil facilities in Shaybah, the kingdom’s largest strategic oil reserve near the UAE border, were targeted by Yemeni forces in a major drone attack.

Yemeni forces also launched a successful raid on a major pipeline spanning the kingdom in May.

Yemeni forces regularly target positions inside Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the Saudi war, which began in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall the country’s Riyadh-allied former regime and crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The Western-backed military aggression, coupled with a naval blockade, has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis, destroyed the country’s infrastructure and led to a massive humanitarian crisis.

The Saudi-led war has so far turned into a quagmire for Riyadh, with Yemeni forces increasingly using sophisticated weaponry in retaliatory attacks. The UAE, Saudi Arabia’s most notable partner in the conflict, has consequently announced the gradual withdrawal of its troops from country, largely because it believes the war has become “unwinnable”, according to US reports.