Yemen rebel attack sparks fire in Saudi gas plant – Aramco

Yemen's Houthi group said on Saturday it had attacked oil facilities at Shayba in Saudi Arabia with 10 drones, according to a tweet by the Iran-aligned movement's Masirah TV. 

The facilities attacked included a refinery and oil storage, it said. 

The attack sparked a fire in a Saudi gas plant Saturday but caused no casualties or disruption to production, state-owned energy company Saudi Aramco said.

"Saudi Aramco's response team controlled a limited fire this morning at the Shaybah natural gas liquefaction facility," the energy giant said. 

"There were no injuries and no interruptions to Saudi Aramco's oil operations."

The Houthi rebels have carried out a spate of cross-border missile and drone attacks targeting Saudi air bases and other facilities in recent months in what it says is retaliation for the Saudi-led air war in Yemen.

Aden

Earlier on Saturday, Saudi-led coalition warplanes fired flares over Yemen’s Aden at dawn, residents said, near camps occupied by southern separatist fighters who last week seized control of the port city, which had been the interim seat of the government. 

The coalition overnight on Saturday renewed a call for the separatist forces to withdraw from all sites they have recently captured in Aden. 

The seizure of government military bases by separatist fighters a week ago has complicated UN efforts to end Yemen’s war and has exposed strains in the Sunni coalition formed four years ago to battle the Iran-allied Houthi group. 

The separatists, backed by coalition member the UAE, are a major component in the anti-Houthi alliance. 

But the war has rekindled old strains between north and south Yemen - formerly separate countries until 1990. 

The coalition statement called for dialogue and said all forces in the south should unite under the coalition to fight the Houthis. 

Saudi state TV said separatist forces would withdraw from the interior ministry and Aden refinery on Saturday, but coalition statements did not mention these specific locations. 

Local officials have previously said that while separatist forces had moved away from the nearly empty presidential palace and central bank, there was no sign they were quitting the military camps which give them effective control of the city. 

“We will not retreat, we will not budge and planes will not scare us,” a statement from one of the brigades fighting as part of the southern separatists said in response to Saturday’s flares and low-flying warplanes. 

According to the statement, and other reports on Thursday, a Saudi delegation had been in Aden to oversee withdrawals. 

A spokesman for the separatist fighters said last week they would not cede control unless the Islamist Islah party, a backbone of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government, and northerners were removed from positions of power in the south. 

The Yemen war has been in military stalemate for years. 

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have come under pressure from Western allies, including those that supply them with arms, to end a conflict that has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine. 

The UAE in June scaled down its presence in Yemen, leaving behind thousands of southern forces it has built and trained.