Three killed, six injured in Yemeni fuel tanker blast

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Yemen’s Houthi rebels have killed three people and wounded six others in an attack in Abu Dhabi on Monday. The attack set fire and three fuel tanker trucks exploded near the storage facilities of state oil company ADNOC. The dead were a Pakistani and two Indians, according to the United Arab Emirates’ state news agency WAM.

Abu Dhabi police said in a statement that fires broke out in the industrial area of ​​Musaffah on Monday afternoon and at a construction site near the Abu Dhabi International Airport in the United Arab Emirates capital. Authorities believe the attack was carried out by drones.

“Initial investigations revealed that the small flying objects that fell in both areas probably belonged to drones. Teams of skilled officers were dispatched and the fire is currently being extinguished,” the police statement said.

The preliminary report stated that “there was no significant damage from either accident” and that a full investigation had been launched.

A spokesman for the Yemeni Houthi movement, which has been at war with the Saudi-led coalition, which includes the United Arab Emirates since 2015, said its militants had launched a military operation in the Gulf Sheikhdom and would release more details in a few hours. , According to Reuters.

The United Arab Emirates’ massive withdrawal from Yemen in 2019 plunged the poorest country in the Middle East into a bloody war for nearly four years and provoked a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its regional adversary, Iran, to finance and arm the Houthis.

Abu Dhabi still has significant influence among Yemeni forces, armed and trained to fight the Houthis, who in 2014 ousted the Saudi-backed government of Yemen led by President Abdurrab Mansour Hadi.

The Houthis have carried out hundreds of cross-border missile and drone strikes into Saudi Arabia over the years, killing tens of thousands of Yemeni people since the airstrikes on Riyadh.