Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it had intercepted two missiles launched by Yemen\u2019s Houthi militia over the capital Riyadh, as a Saudi-led coalition moved to wrest control of Yemen\u2019s main port city from the Iran-aligned group. At least six loud blasts were heard and bright flashes were seen in the sky over the Saudi capital, a Reuters witness said. Shrapnel was spotted on a street in the diplomatic quarter where most embassies are located and many foreigners live, but there was no serious damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cSaudi Royal Air Defence Forces intercepted and destroyed the missiles. Some of the debris of the intercepted missiles landed on residential areas, thankfully without causing any casualties,\u201d coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The attack was the first to target Riyadh since the Saudi-led coalition launched an offensive on June 12 to capture Yemen\u2019s Hodeidah port city, in the biggest battle of the war aimed at weakening the Houthis by cutting their main supply line.<\/p>\n
The Houthis, who control the capital Sanaa, have fired dozens of missiles into the kingdom in recent months, part of a three-year-old conflict widely seen as a proxy battle between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.<\/p>\n
There were fire trucks and a heightened security presence in southwestern Riyadh\u2019s diplomatic quarter following Sunday\u2019s missile attack, which was at least the sixth on the capital since December.<\/p>\n
The rockets\u2019 interception by Patriot missiles sent debris measuring up to several metres hurtling towards residential areas. Pieces fell near the US mission and at a school in the diplomatic quarter and damaged a nearby car, Malki told Reuters during a rare tour of affected neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
Debris sparked a fire at a construction site 10 km (6 miles) further south and fell on the roof of a private residence.<\/p>\n
Malki said coalition advances on Hodeidah and other fronts were pushing the Houthis to try to project strength through such attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that this is not going to affect the civilian life in Riyadh or other parts of the kingdom. We know that the Houthis are acting unpredictably,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it had intercepted two missiles launched by Yemen\u2019s Houthi militia over the capital Riyadh, as a Saudi-led coalition moved to wrest control of Yemen\u2019s main port city from the Iran-aligned group. At least six loud blasts were heard and bright flashes were seen in the sky over the Saudi capital, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35251,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35249\/revisions\/35251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}