Saudi Arabia retaliates with 29 air strikes on Yemen after ballistic missile fired at Riyadh airport
The Kingdom said it holds Iran responsible for the missile fired at its capital and warned it was an "act of war".
Saudi Arabia-led coalition carried out at least 29 air strikes on Yemen's Sanaa province in retaliation to a missile attack on a Riyadh airport on Saturday (4 November). The Kingdom also warned Iran that it holds the country responsible for the "act of war".
Houthis, the Yemeni rebel group, said through its Saba news agency that more than 15 Saudi air strikes targeted Sanaa and another 14 targeted the districts of Sinhan and Bani Bahloul in the province in the early hours of Sunday.
The strikes were launched hours after Houthi rebels claimed to have fired a ballistic missile towards the Saudi capital Riyadh, targeting an airport. However, the missile was intercepted and there was no damage to life and property in the attack.
A spokesman for the rebels told Al Jazeera that they launched a Burkan 2-H missile - a Scud-type long range ballistic missile with a range of more than 800km towards Riyadh late on Saturday. "The capital cities of countries that continually shell us, targeting innocent civilians, will not be spared from our missiles," the spokesman added.
Colonel Turki al-Maliki of Saudi forces confirmed that they intercepted the ballistic missile with a surface-to-air Patriot missile. It shattered into fragments in an "uninhabited area" east of Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport, he added.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia held Iran responsible for the attack by the Houthi rebels, who control large parts of Yemen, including capital Sanaa, and the Sadaa province.
In a statement released on Monday (6 November) morning, the Kingdom said: "Iran's role and its direct command of its Houthi proxy in this matter constitutes a clear act of aggression that targets neighboring countries, and threatens peace and security in the region and globally.
"Therefore, the coalition's command considers this a blatant act of military aggression by the Iranian regime, and could rise to be considered as an act of war against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," the statement, published by the official Saudi Press Agency, read, according to RT News.
The statement also added that the Kingdom "reserves [the] right to respond to Iran in the appropriate time and manner".
Meanwhile, describing the situation in Yemen, Fatik al-Rodaini, an activist based in Sanaa, told Al Jazeera that some of the raids targeted Sanaa's old city, a Unesco world heritage site. "This is the worst day I've experienced since the start of the war," he added.
Blaming the Saudis for the killing of innocent Yemeni civilians, Radaini said: "I am fearing for my children's lives. They haven't gone outside all day. Just a few minutes ago I was thinking of letting them run to the shops but we heard another loud explosion and my wife said 'no'."