Saudis intercept missile targeting royal palace
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Shiite rebels said it intercepted a missile fired over southern Riyadh on Tuesday, which the rebels said was targeting a “top leadership” meeting at the royal palace in the kingdom’s capital.
It was the second time in as many months that a rebel projectile had reached as far inside the kingdom as Riyadh.
The Yemeni rebels, known as the Houthis, said they launched a ballistic missile to target Yamama Palace in Riyadh, where King Salman leads weekly government meetings and receives dignitaries and heads of state from around the world.
The statement from the U.S.-backed coalition, carried by Saudi state TV, said the missile was fired by the Houthis. State TV said no damage was caused by the intercepted missile.
The coalition later said the missile launch proved the “continued involvement” of Iran in supporting the Houthis. It also repeated its claim that the rebels use “relief work outlets” to smuggle such missiles inside Yemen to target the kingdom.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said that “the very fact of this attack is a flashing red siren” for the Security Council.
While not all evidence is in, “it bears all the hallmarks of previous attacks using Iranian-provided weapons,” Haley told a council meeting on implementation of a U.N. resolution that endorsed the July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran.
Last week, Haley displayed what she said was “undeniable” evidence that Iran was supplying the Houthis with missiles.
Iran rejected the allegations and has repeatedly denied arming the rebels. The Houthis say their missiles are produced in Yemen, which is awash with weapons.
The Saudi-led coalition has been at war with the Houthis since March 2015. The Houthis, who are allied with Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran, have forced into exile the Saudi-backed and internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Despite a fierce air campaign against the Houthis, the rebels still control the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north.
Earlier this month, the Houthis killed Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, after he broke off his alliance with them and appeared ready to switch sides.
After Saleh’s death, the U.N. human-rights office said Tuesday, 136 Yemeni civilians and other noncombatants were killed in airstrikes carried out over 11 days by the Saudi-led coalition.
Spokesman Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the killings occurred between Dec. 6 and Dec. 16 in four northern provinces.
The airstrikes, which also injured 87 people, included hits on Yemen’s rebel-run TV channel, a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida, and a wedding party — a strike that killed one woman and nine children, the rights office said.
After originally indicating that the 11-day confirmed death toll was 115, Colville later said it had increased to 136 to include a strike Friday on a farmhouse in Hodeida governorate that left 20 people dead — including 14 children.