Yemen’s Houthis said they launched missiles at Abha airport in south-western Saudi Arabia on Monday in response to air strikes on Sanaa’s airport that they blamed on the kingdom.
The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, which backs the country’s internationally-recognised government, said its air defences “dealt with” the missiles and no casualties were reported.
The Houthis, who control north-western Yemen and are backed by Iran, earlier accused Saudi Arabia of “blatant aggression”, saying it had struck the runway of Sanaa’s airport.
The strike was claimed by Yemen’s government, which said it wanted to prevent an Iranian plane from landing.
It was the most significant escalation in the largely dormant conflict between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia since an informal truce took effect four years ago.
Yemen has been devastated by a civil war that began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government from Sanaa, the capital. The conflict escalated in 2015, after the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened in an attempt to restore the government’s rule.
The fighting has reportedly left more than 150,000 people dead and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than 22 million people in need of some form of aid, according to the UN.
On Monday afternoon, footage on social media showed plumes of smoke rising above rooftops in Sanaa after the strikes at the city’s international airport.
The Houthis’ al-Masirah TV said the “departure and landing runways” were targeted.
The internationally-recognised Yemeni government, which is based in the southern port of Aden, said its forces had carried out the strikes amid a dispute over the plane used by a Houthi delegation returning from Iran after the funeral of the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The terrorist Houthi militias, backed by the Iranian regime, prevented Yemeni national aircraft from landing at the airport in the capital, Sanaa, while insisting on allowing an Iranian plane to violate Yemeni territory; consequently, the airport runway was targeted,” the Yemeni defence ministry said.
The Iranian plane had to divert and later landed in the Red Sea city of Hudaydah, about 150km (93 miles) to the south-west, according to the Houthis.
For more than a decade, aircraft entering Yemeni airspace have required clearance from the Saudi-led coalition, which says it is acting at the Yemeni government’s request.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the Sanaa strikes, which he said had ended “the de-escalation phase” of their conflict and would not go “unanswered or unpunished”.