On August 23, the Yemeni Navy [loyal to the Houthis] announced that one of its units carried out a special operation, during which a “military target” inside Saudi Arabia was destroyed with a “suitable weapon.”
Minutes after the Yemeni Navy statement, the Saudi-led coalition announced that it had foiled a “terrorist attack” and destroyed a remotely controlled water-borne improvised explosive device (WBIED) of the Houthis off the western coast of Saudi Arabia.
“The Houthis and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard continue to threaten the international navigation and trade routes,” the Saudi led coalition said in its statement and stressed that it will take “measures to protect commercial vessels in the Red Sea.”
The Saudi Sabq newspaper said that the WBIED was on its way to strike an oil terminal of the Saudi Aramco oil company on the coast of the western Saudi province of Jizan. However, the Saudi Arabian Border Guards (SABG) managed to damage the WBIED and then detonated it in a secured area in the Red Sea.
This was the first attempt by the Houthis to attack a naval facility inside Saudi Arabia since the outbreak of the Yemeni war in 2015. The Saudi-led coalition will likely respond by stepping up its bombardment campaign on the Yemeni city of al-Hudaydah, which is the main stronghold of the Houthis on the western Yemeni coast.
