Missile destroyed over Najran

Riyadh : Saudi air defences intercepted a missile fired by Houthi militia towards the Kingdom’s southern city of Najran on Saturday, the Saudi-led coalition said yesterday, adding that one person was wounded in the incident.

“The missile was fired at Najran indiscriminately and with the aim of hitting residential areas,” coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki told the official Saudi Press Agency.

“It was successfully intercepted and the debris fell on residential areas, lightly wounding one Indian expatriate.”

Yemen’s Saba news agency, run by the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, said the missile had been fired at a Saudi National Guard base in Najran, just over the border from Yemen where the Saudi-led coalition intervened on the side of the government in March 2015.

The coalition said on Thursday it intercepted another missile fired by the Huthis at the southern city of Jazan — the latest in a series of such attacks that have drawn widespread condemnation.

The coalition spokesman again hit out at Iran after Saturday’s attack, accusing it of jeopardising the security of Saudi Arabia, the region and the whole world.

“The hostile action by the Iran-backed Houthi group proves the continued involvement of the Iranian regime in supporting the Houthi armed group with qualitative capabilities in  clear and explicit defiance and violation of UN Resolutions No. 2216 and No. 2231 to threaten the security of the Kingdom and the regional and international security,” Colonel Al-Maliki said.

The UN Security Council this week condemned “in the strongest possible terms” multiple missile attacks launched by the Huthis on Saudi territory, saying they posed a threat to regional security.

In one of the biggest such attacks yet, Saudi forces last weekend said they intercepted seven missiles fired by rebels toward cities including Riyadh, killing one person.