Al Houthis in dangerous escalation
SEVEN MISSILES HIT SEVERAL CITIES IN SAUDI ARABIA ON THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF YEMEN WAR KILLING ONE AND INJURING TWO
Saudi forces intercepted seven Yemeni militant missiles on Sunday, including over the capital Riyadh, in a deadly escalation on the third anniversary of the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in Yemen.
One Egyptian man was killed and two of his countrymen were wounded by falling shrapnel in Riyadh, authorities said, with residents reporting loud explosions and bright flashes in the sky shortly before midnight.
The Iran-aligned Al Houthi militants fired three missiles at Riyadh and four at the southern cities of Khamis Mushait, Jizan and Najran, with the coalition saying they all targeted populated areas.
“This aggressive and hostile action by the Iran-backed Al Houthi group proves that the Iranian regime continues to support the armed group with military capabilities,” coalition spokesman Turki Al Malki said.
“The firing of multiple ballistic missiles towards cities is a serious development.”
The Al Houthi-run Al Masira television channel claimed the militants had targeted Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport as well as other airstrips in the south of the kingdom.
The strikes come after the US defence secretary last week urged Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman during his visit to Washington to pursue “urgent efforts” to end Yemen’s wrenching conflict.
Capacity to strike
Al Houthi militants have fired dozens of missiles into Saudi Arabia since last year, all of which Saudi forces have intercepted, underscoring their capacity to strike deep within the kingdom amid a stalemated war in Yemen.
Another strike on December 19 targeted Riyadh’s Yamamah palace, the official residence of King Salman.
The latest attack could further escalate the coalition’s military campaign.
A major attack targeting Riyadh international airport on November 4 triggered Saudi Arabia to tighten its blockade of the Red Sea port of Hodeidah — accusing Iran of violating an arms embargo and smuggling weapons into Al Houthi hands.
Saudi Arabia has accused its arch foe Iran of supplying the missile to the militants, a charge Tehran strongly denied.
Al Houthi militant chief Abdul Malek Al Houthi on Sunday said his fighters were ready for an escalation against the Saudi-led coalition, in an address marking the war’s third anniversary. Al Houthis held a huge rally in Sana’a yesterday to mark the anniversary.
The Saudi-led Arab coalition entered the Yemeni war in 2015 just months after an Al Houthi coup forced internationallyrecognised Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi out of power.
He later was able to escape house arrest and flee to Aden where he temporarily shifted government headquarters.
Since then, the coalition has gained back 86 per cent of Yemeni territory but major population centres still remain under Al Houthi control.
Saudi Arabia and the US have accused Iran of illegally smuggling weapons into Yemen to sustain Al Houthi war efforts.
On November 4, Al Houthis fired an Iranian-made ballistic missile towards Riyadh for the first time. Although it was intercepted, Riyadh called it an ‘act of war’.
Since then Saudi and Yemeni officials have pleaded with world powers to censure Iran for violating an arms embargo and arming Al Houthis.
Under the US administration of Donald Trump, several officials have condemned Iran’s ongoing support to the militants in Yemen but have yet to take concrete steps against it.
Awkward alliance
The war has cost the lives of thousands of Yemenis and pushed the Arab world’s poorest country to the brink of famine. The latest government push seeks to take advantage of cracks in the awkward Al Houthi alliance with former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s supporters.
Saleh ruled Yemen for more than three decades until he was forced to resign following an Arab Spring uprising in 2011.
He remained in the country, however, and continued to wield power from behind the scenes. In 2014, his forces allied with Al Houthi militia, despite the fact that as president he had gone to war with them.
There had been simmering tensions between the two awkward allies in past months that boiled over in December when Saleh suggested he would cooperate with Hadi — he was assassinated shortly after.
Since then senior members of Saleh’s party have either been executed or placed under house arrest by Al Houthis amid a draconian crackdown.
While most analysts say that Saleh’s slaying could give Al Houthis the upper hand in the short term, the broken alliance between Al Houthis and forces loyal to Saleh appears to be permanent, which will help the Yemeni government and its backers in the Saudi-led coalition weaken their grip on the country given the reduction in manpower.
The UN says living conditions in the war-scarred country have reached catastrophic levels and that 8.4 million people face imminent famine.
The UN urgently needs $350 million for humanitarian projects in Yemen, a senior agency official said on Sunday, insisting it was mere “peanuts” compared with the cost of the country’s war.
Numerous rounds of UNsponsored peace talks have failed to stem the bloodshed in Yemen.
… strongly condemns the attacks carried out by Al Houthi militias who used Iranian-made missiles to target Saudi Arabia in an attempt to terrorise civilians and damage the Kingdom’s infrastructure.”
UAE Foreign Ministry statement
… strongly denounce the ballistic missile attacks on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This hostile act violates all international norms, values and principles.”
Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah | Kuwait Emir
The Al Houthi missiles are Iranian. Selfincrimination. Iran will know the fate awaiting it.”
Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Khalifa |
Bahrain Foreign Minister
This aggressive and hostile action by the Iranbacked Al Houthi group proves that the Iranian regime continues to support the armed group….”
Turki Al Malki |
Saudi-led coalition spokesman
Roadside bombs disguised as rocks in Yemen bear similarities to others used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and by insurgents in Iraq and Bahrain, suggesting at the least an Iranian influence in their manufacture, a watchdog group said yesterday.
The report by Conflict Armament Research comes as the West and United Nations researchers accuse Iran of supplying arms to Yemen’s Iranbacked Al Houthi militia, which has held the country’s capital since September 2014.
Those weapons allegedly included ballistic missiles used to target Saudi Arabia, which leads a military coalition of Arab nations against Al Houthis. A barrage of Al Houthi missile fire late on Sunday killed one person in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and wounded two others.
No more ‘plausible denials’
“What we’re hoping this does is make plausible deniability not very plausible,” said Tim Michetti, head of regional operations for Conflict Armament Research.
“You can’t really deny this anymore once the components these things are made with are traced to Iranian distributors.”
Michetti’s organisation said it examined a fake rock bomb
in January near Mokha, some 250km southwest of the capital, Sana’a.
The fiberglass-encased bomb, packed with explosives, could be armed by radio and triggered by an infrared beam, the group said.
It said there were three varieties, including anti-personnel mines and so-called explosively formed projectiles, which can penetrate armoured vehicles and were used with lethal effect against US troops following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Electrical circuitry in the bombs mirrored those manufactured by militants in Bahrain, while the bombs bore markings suggesting one workshop massproduced the explosives, the report said.
Such bombs, however, have yet to be used in Bahrain.
Investigators also found a type of Chinese-manufactured wire covering used in other Iranian materiel, the report said.
It said independent experts also examined the explosives. Those experts said that “construction indicates that the bomb maker had a degree of knowledge in constructing devices that resembled, and possibly functioned in a manner similar to (explosively formed projectile bombs) that have been forensically tied to Iran and Hezbollah,” the report said.
Iran’s culpability
This is not the first time Iran has been accused of arming Al Houthis. The US Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, has repeatedly said Iran sends arms into Yemen.
It points to seizures over a four-week period in early 2016, when coalition warships stopped three dhows. The dhows carried thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles as well as sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles and other weapons.
One dhow carried 2,000 new assault rifles with serial numbers in sequential order, suggesting they came from a national stockpile, a previous Conflict Armament Research report said.
The rocket-propelled grenade launchers also bore hallmarks of being manufactured in Iran, the group said.