Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a Twitter post that the attack took place at dawn using a winged drone and had struck its target, without elaborating.

Last November, a Houthi missile struck a petroleum products distribution plant in Jeddah in an attack that Aramco said hit a storage tank but did not affect domestic fuel supplies.

The Iran-aligned movement, which has been battling a Saudi-led military coalition for six years, has recently stepped up cross-border attacks on Saudi cities, mostly targeting southern Saudi Arabia. The coalition says it has intercepted most attacks.

The conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthis deny being puppets of Tehran and say they are fighting a corrupt system.

Earlier, The Saudi Arabia which led the Arab Coalition fighting in Yemen intercepted an explosive-laden drone launched by the Houthis towards Abha airport, Saudi Al-Ekhbaria TV reported.

For their part, Houthis announced targeting Abha airport stressing that the operation came in response to the fighting escalation of the Saudi-led Coalition.

The coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 after the Houthis ousted the internationally recognized government from power in the capital, Sanaa.

The nearly six-year war between a Saudi-led coalition and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement, and the ensuing economic collapse, has left 80% of the population in need of help and pushed millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine.

Pockets of famine-like conditions reappeared last year for the first time in two years as the COVID-19 pandemic, falling remittances and underfunding exacerbated the situation.

A fundraising event for Yemen’s humanitarian crisis is expected to take place in early March, hosted virtually by Sweden and Switzerland.