Shiite missiles target Saudi Arabia
Yemeni rebel rocket leaves 1 person dead in Riyadh, 2 hurt
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen’s Shiite rebels fired a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting Saudi Arabia late Sunday on the third anniversary of a kingdom-led war in Yemen, with fragments of one missile over Riyadh killing one person and wounding two.
The casualties were the first in Saudi Arabia’s capital since the Saudi-led war in Yemen began in March 2015, though previous rockets fired by the Yemeni rebels have caused deaths in other parts of the kingdom.
The rebels known as Houthis said they launched a missile attack targeting Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport and other sites, again showing their ability to strike deep into the neighboring kingdom amid the stalemated war in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country.
The barrage likely will spark new criticism of Iran’s role in the conflict as well, as the Houthis identified some of the missiles fired as a type that the United Nations and the West say comes from Tehran.
The Saudi military said it intercepted seven ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis at the kingdom, three of them targeting Riyadh, two targeting Jazan and one apiece targeting Najran and Khamis Mushait.
The Saudi-owned satellite news channel Al Arabiya aired footage that it said showed Patriot missile batteries firing at the incoming Houthi missiles.
One Egyptian national was killed and two other Egyptians suffered wounds when a fragment of a missile over Riyadh fell on a residential neighborhood, the staterun Saudi Press Agency said.
Al Masirah, a Houthi-run satellite news channel, identified some of the missiles fired as the Burkan, or Volcano, missile. The United Nations, Western countries and the Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen all say the Burkan mirrors characteristics of an Iranian Qiam ballistic missile. They say that suggests Tehran either shared the technology or smuggled disassembled missiles to the Houthis who then rebuilt them.
Iran long has denied supplying arms to the Houthis, though a growing body of evidence contradicts that claim.
Today, Conflict Armament Research, a watchdog group, released a report linking roadside bombs in Yemen to others used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and by insurgents in Iraq and Bahrain. The bombs are disguised as rocks, and the technical similarities suggest at least Iranian influence in their manufacture, the report says.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations dismissed the new report. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has derided such weapons research as “fabricating evidence.”
“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 organization, which receives funding from the United Arab Emirates, Germany and the European Union to research weaponry recovered in Yemen, said it examined a fake rock bomb in January near Mokha, some 150 miles southwest of the capital, Sanaa.
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.
Meanwhile, a top official in the U.N. children’s agency said Sunday that warring sides in Yemen and their international backers must stop blocking or delaying aid deliveries, warning that such practices have contributed to worsening malnutrition among children and hampered efforts to fight cholera.
Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, spoke as civil war in the Arab world’s poorest country — a proxy battle between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran — enters its fourth year.
The stalemated war has damaged Yemen’s infrastructure, crippled its health system and pushed it to the brink of famine. The country now suffers the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22.2 million people in need of assistance. Malnutrition, cholera and other diseases have killed or sickened thousands of civilians over the years.