Falling shrapnel damaged Saudi Aramco's administrative tower in Riyadh's King Abdullah Financial District on Sunday 8 November, a Saudi Ministry of Energy official said, with no injuries reported1. A Reuters witness saw windows blown out across several floors of the Aramco Tower. The Saudi-led coalition, which has fought the Houthis, the Iran-aligned movement that holds Yemen's capital, since 2015, said it intercepted two ballistic and two cruise missiles aimed at Riyadh and the south, plus one more aimed at the Eastern Province.
Riyadh never confirmed Houthi claims to have hit its defence ministry and Ras Tanura. This time its own energy ministry reported the damage, a month after Houthi missiles killed 13 people at the capital's main airport. Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesman, claimed six operations against Aramco sites, Riyadh airport and Saudi positions on both sides of the border.
Yemen counted its own dead. A strike on al-Shariyah, a village in the Bani Hushaish district east of Sanaa, killed at least 33 people on 7 November, among them 8 women and 13 children, and wounded 39, said Anees al-Asbahi, spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry2. The coalition gave no immediate comment, and no independent source has verified the toll. Saree said the coalition carried out 105 strikes on Sanaa and seven other governorates in a single day.
Three days before the Riyadh hit, coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said Saudi air defences destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile fired towards the region around Madinah, Islam's second holiest city. Kuwait condemned the attempt and restated its support for Saudi Arabia, the Qatar News Agency reported3. Saree denied aiming at Madinah: "Our operations target only oil facilities and military bases"4.
