Saudi Arabia: Iran-Backed Yemen Rebels Directly Targeting Mecca with Missiles

According to the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi insurgents in Yemen, the Houthis launched a ballistic missile at Mecca on Thursday, but the coalition was able to bring it down about 40 miles short of the Muslim holy city.

Reuters quotes Saudi state news agencies saying the coalition also conducted a retaliatory strike against the launch site.

The Houthis conceded through their official news agency that a Burkan-1 ballistic missile was launched into Saudi Arabia, but they said the target was the King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, not Mecca.

The King Abdulaziz International Airport is not only Saudi Arabia’s busiest civilian airport, as Reuters observes, but it’s also a major travel hub for the entire region. Already one of the largest airports in the world, it is currently undergoing an expansion to handle 30 million passengers per year. The Houthis are, therefore, saying they were merely trying to kill thousands of civilians instead of blowing up Mecca.

This was not the first Burkan-1 missile strike from Yemen into Saudi territory. A launch on October 11 targeted King Fahd Air Base near Taif. According to the Saudi Press Agency, it was the 18th missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s southern provinces since 2015, all of them intercepted successfully. The longest-range attack conducted by the Yemeni rebels hit a Saudi missile base some 350 kilometers from the Yemeni border.

The Houthis insist that some of these missiles were not intercepted and caused significant damage to their targets. Deutsche Welle points out that the Houthis claim the Mecca missile actually hit King Abdulaziz International Airport and caused “massive destruction,” but the airport was reporting no delays, diversions, or damage as of Friday morning.

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http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/10/28/iran-backed-yemen-rebels-launch-ballistic-missile-mecca/