Houthis Strike Aramco Oil Refinery in Jizan in Retaliation Against Saudi Arabia

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi group has claimed it attacked an oil facility on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, targeting a Saudi oil refinery in Jizan.

“The Houthis have successfully targeted the Aramco refinery in Jizan using drones, and the attack was on target,” said the group’s military spokesman, Yahya Saree, as reported by AFP on Sunday (9/8/2026).

He added that the attack was launched in response to a Saudi drone entering northwestern Yemen. Aramco is the state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry stated that civil emergency response teams had successfully brought a fire at the Jizan refinery under control, but did not identify the cause of the blaze.

The facility was also targeted by the Houthis in July.

“Saudi Aramco industrial security firefighting teams extinguished a fire that broke out in the early hours of this morning, Sunday, at one of the Saudi Aramco refinery facilities in Jizan, with no injuries reported,” the ministry said in a statement.

The 2022 ceasefire in Yemen’s civil war — a conflict in which Saudi Arabia has been involved for more than a decade in support of the internationally recognised government — appears to have collapsed last month. This was marked by the Houthis’ announcement of a maritime blockade against their northern neighbour and attacks on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea.

The Houthi group controls vast areas of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa and regions bordering Saudi provinces along the Red Sea coast.

Yemen’s threat to shipping lanes and Saudi oil facilities comes amid Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has become a key flashpoint between Tehran and Washington in the context of efforts to end the Middle East war initiated by the US and Israel in February.