Houthi insurgents threatened to attack civilian targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in response to Saudi Arabia’s call to put Yemen’s Al-Hodeida port under UN administration. Houthi leader Abdel-Malek Al-Houthi said his militia’s ballistic missiles were capable of reaching the United Arab Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi and anywhere inside Saudi Arabia. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels had repeatedly launched missiles and rockets toward targets in Saudi Arabia, including two that Saudi security officials had said were aimed at the holy city of Makkah. In both instances, the missiles were shot down by Saudi Air Defenses Forces before they could cause any damage. A number of rocket attacks aimed at targets across Saudi Arabia’s southern border with Yemen had resulted in deaths and injuries, both involving military and civilians. Yemen President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, is fighting to drive the Houthis out of cities they seized in 2014 and 2015 in a rapid rise to national power. The United Nations had proposed that the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, where 80 percent of Yemen’s food imports arrive, should be handed to a neutral party, to smoothen the flow of humanitarian relief and prevent the port from being engulfed by Yemen’s two-year-old war.
