Houthi drone site destroyed by Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s Sanaa

Operation was in response to attack on kingdom's Abha international airport

Saudi-led coalition fighter jets have played a key role in stopping Houthi attacks.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels said it destroyed a drone control operations room in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in an air strike.

The attack was in response to the “threat and the military necessity to protect civilians”, the coalition said on Friday.

The coalition also destroyed a small Houthi boat in the south of the Red Sea that was loaded with explosives, Saudi state television reported.

The coalition said the boat had departed from Yemen's main Red Sea port of Hodeidah.

On Monday, the coalition announced that it had destroyed telecoms systems in Sanaa used by the Houthis to control weaponised drones.

It said the latest operation was in response to a Houthi drone attack on Saudi Arabia's Abha international airport last week, which left 12 people wounded.

The rebels' attacks on Saudi Arabia have become increasingly common, with air defence teams intercepting rockets and drones on an almost daily basis.

Experts and officials say the Houthi drone and missile programme has become increasingly sophisticated with assistance from Iran and its main proxy Hezbollah.

Yemen has been engulfed by civil war since 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi rebels took control of Sanaa and much of the country’s north, forcing the government to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.

The coalition entered the war in March 2015 to try to restore President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi to power.