Blasts rock Yemen's capital as Houthis vow to retaliate

A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has attacked Yemen's capital, Sanaa, according to Yemen's Houthis, who have vowed to retaliate with attacks on the kingdom's airports and oil refineries.

Houthi-run media reported that the coalition had targeted the Yemen Petroleum Company's Sabah central station on Tuesday evening, local time, a fuel depot on the outskirts of the capital held by the Iran-backed militant group.

In a rare statement, the Saudi-led coalition had earlier warned civilians to stay away from the oil depot and nearby storage facility.

The oil company said its storage facilities were empty and that a Saudi strike would not affect oil reserves or supplies for residents.

Witnesses in Sanaa reported hearing explosions, but it was not immediately clear which facilities were hit.

The strikes mark a fresh escalation in the widening Middle East crisis.

The latest attacks come as Saudi Arabia begins to investigate how its air defences failed to intercept a barrage of missiles and drones fired by the Houthis on Saturday, which struck Riyadh's international airport, killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 300 others.

Yemen's Houthis had warned if Saudi Arabia targeted its oil facilities in Sanaa, it would retaliate by targeting the international airport in Riyadh again.

The Iran-backed militant group has warned Saudi citizens to evacuate the airport area, along with Aramco's headquarters in Dammam and an Aramco refinery in Riyadh.

"The Yemeni Armed Forces urge all citizens to immediately evacuate and move away from targets that our forces will strike should the Saudi enemy target" a site in Sanaa, military spokesman Yahya Saree posted on X on Tuesday.

This latest conflict between the Saudis and the Houthis began last month after the rebels seized key areas along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a critical waterway for the transport of oil and other goods through the Red Sea off Yemen.

Sana'a Centre senior researcher Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen told the ABC she did not believe the Saudi-backed Yemeni government had the means to control the Houthis at the moment.

"It is the same issue: the fragmentation of the different military factions, the intelligence, their ability in hacking the telecommunications, and the lack of communication between them and the Saudis," she told The World.

"There is no plan or strategy to change this poor performance so far.

"It doesn't seem to me that the military situation is going in their favour."

She said Iran had been increasing its supply of weapons to the Houthis since June "because the Houthis have become the most important Iranian actor in the region".

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has accused the Houthis of deliberately trying to drive up oil prices ahead of the US midterm elections and warned that he would "never forget" their attacks on Saudi Arabia.

"The Houthis are behaving very badly," Mr Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, accusing the group of resuming attacks at Iran's behest after a period of relative quiet following US strikes in Yemen last year.