Drone strike wounds 8 at Saudi airport
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A bomb-laden drone on Tuesday crashed into an airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia, wounding eight people and damaging a civilian plane, Saudi state television reported, the latest assault on the kingdom amid its grinding war in neighboring Yemen.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen blamed the assault on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, saying it was the second such strike on Abha airport in the last 24 hours. An earlier ballistic missile attack scattered shrapnel across the tarmac but caused no casualties. The Houthis did not claim responsibility for the strikes and its military spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment.
Saudi forces said they downed the drone, and that their interception sent fragments flying that punctured small holes in a passenger plane, shattered glass and wounded citizens of Bangladesh, Nepal and India. One Bangladeshi man remained in critical condition, the coalition said, without offering further details about the assault.
The attack comes just days after missiles and drones slammed into a key military base in Yemen’s south, killing at least 30 Saudi-backed Yemeni troops and marking one of the deadliest attacks in the country’s yearslong civil war. No one claimed responsibility for the strike, which bore the hallmarks the Iranian-supported rebels.
Since 2015, Yemen’s Houthi rebels battling the Saudi-led military coalition have targeted international airports, along with military installations and critical oil infrastructure, within Saudi Arabia.