Shafaq News- Sanaa

Yemen’s Houthis (Ansarallah) on Thursday carried out a two-drone attack on Saudi Aramco’s 400,000-barrel-per-day Jazan refinery, their second claimed strike on the facility in five days.

The Houthi-run Sabaa News Agency quoted a military source as saying the operation was retaliation for “Saudi violations of Yemeni airspace and sovereignty in Saada and Hajjah provinces.”

Saudi Arabia has yet to comment.

The Houthis also claimed a drone attack on the refinery on August 9. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry reported a fire at the facility that day, which was “extinguished without injuries,” but did not identify the cause.

On July 20, the group declared a maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia and has since announced attacks on Saudi-linked tankers, Yanbu facilities and the Jazan refinery. Aramco has postponed the refinery’s restart to August 30 after Houthi attacks in recent weeks, according to industry monitor IIR cited by Reuters.

Cargo tracking platform Vortexa stated that all Yanbu loadings last week were carried out with Automatic Identification System signals switched off because of the attack risk, while Kpler estimated that about 70% of Saudi west coast loadings in recent weeks had “gone dark.”