A fire that broke out at a facility belonging to Saudi Arabian state oil giant Aramco has been extinguished, authorities said on Sunday.
The blaze erupted early in the morning at a site in the coastal city of Jizan, the Saudi Ministry of Energy wrote in a statement on X. No casualties were reported.
“The competent authorities are completing the necessary procedures to deal with the incident,” the ministry added, without specifying the cause of the fire.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi armed group claimed responsibility for the attack on the facility, located on the Red Sea near the border, marking the latest in a series of Houthi claims of strikes targeting Saudi oil sites.
A military spokesman for the Houthi-led government in the capital Sanaa, Yahya Saree, wrote on X that the group “succeeded in targeting the Aramco refinery in Jizan with a drone, and the strike was precise.”
He said the attack was in response to Saudi Arabia’s “breach of the airspace of the provinces of Saada and Hajjah” with drones.
There was no immediate comment from Riyadh on the claim. Al Jazeera has contacted the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Houthis last month claimed attacks on Aramco facilities in Jizan and also said they targeted oil installations in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia’s principal west coast export gateway.
Aramco chief Amin Nasser said last week that recent attacks on the company’s facilities had caused some production interruptions but expressed confidence that operations could be restored quickly, adding that the attacks had no material operational or financial impact.
The attacks have added to growing strains on a 2022 truce in the war between the Houthis and Yemen’s internationally recognized government, backed by Saudi Arabia.
The Houthis, who took control of the capital Sanaa in 2014, also declared a blockade on Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea last month, threatening shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb strait.
Saudi authorities have also blamed Iran-aligned armed groups in Iraq for attacks on its oil facilities.
On Friday, Riyadh signed a defense pact with Turkey and Pakistan amid rising regional tensions from the US-Israel war on Iran.
Source: www.aljazeera.com