Yemen’s Houthis claim three dead, six wounded in UAE tanker explosion

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Three people were killed and six wounded in an attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in Abu Dhabi on Monday, according to reports. The attack sparked a fire and caused the explosion of three tankers near the storage facility of state oil company ADNOC. The dead were a Pakistani and two Indians, according to the UAE’s state news agency, WAM.

Abu Dhabi Police said in a statement that the blaze started on Monday afternoon at a construction site near the Mussafah Industrial Zone and Abu Dhabi International Airport in the UAE capital. Authorities believe the attack was carried out by drones.

“Preliminary investigations indicate that the cause of the fire was a small flying object, possibly a drone, that landed in the two areas,” the police statement said. “Teams have been dispatched and the fire is currently being extinguished.”

“There was no significant damage in either incident,” the initial statement said, adding that a full investigation had been launched.

A spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi movement, which has been at war with the Saudi-led coalition including the UAE since 2015, said its militants had launched military operations in the Gulf emirate and would reveal more details in the coming hours, according to Reuters agency report.

The UAE essentially pulled out of Yemen in 2019, about four years into a bloody war that has plunged the poorest country in the Middle East into mass starvation and fueled a proxy between Saudi Arabia and its regional rival Iran war, which backed the Houthis with money and arms.

Abu Dhabi still has a significant presence in its armed and trained Yemeni forces to fight the Houthis, which ousted Yemen’s Saudi-led Saudi-led coalition in 2014 supported government.

Since Riyadh launched airstrikes on Yemen, the Houthis have launched hundreds of cross-border missile and drone strikes against Saudi Arabia, killing tens of thousands of Yemenis.