Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militias fired ballistic missiles and explosive drones at the Red Sea port city of al-Mokha on Wednesday, causing several deaths and injuries, according to the official Saudi-led coalition statement.
Military sources told Reuters that three of the missiles had been successfully intercepted, but the fourth struck military warehouses at the port. Various sources said that 10 people had been killed in the attack.
Al-Mokha had served as a military base for the United Arab Emirates until it withdrew earlier this year. Saudi-led forces took control of the port in July.
The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 after Iran-backed Houthi forces ousted the internationally recognized government from power in the capital, Sanaa.
On Tuesday, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the southern separatists signed an agreement to end a power struggle in Yemen’s south in an attempt to unify and refocus the coalition against the Houthis.
Wednesday’s attack was the most recent of many Houthi missile attacks this year. Its most notable attack against Saudi Arabia came in August, when a Houthi Borkan-3 missile flew over 800 miles before accurately striking its target in Dammam, a city on the Persian Gulf.
For several years now, Iran has denied claims that it supports the Houthi rebels; however, on October 1, Iran’s chief of staff of the armed forces admitted that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps offers support to Houthi militias.
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