Fire breaks out at Saudi Aramco’s Riyadh refinery

Saudi Aramco said on Wednesday that a minor fire that was controlled at its Riyadh refinery was due to “an operational incident”.

“No personnel are injured and no impact on operations,” Aramco said in an update on its official Twitter account after saying earlier that it had contained a limited fire that erupted in one of its storage containers.

The updated tweet came after the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen said that one of its drones had attacked the refinery.

“Our drone air forces have targeted the refinery of ARAMCO company in Riyadh,” read a tweet on the account of the Houthi-run television channel al-Masirah.

The Houthis, who control Yemen’s capital Sanaa, have fired dozens of missiles into Saudi Arabia in recent months as part of a three-year-old conflict. Most of the missiles have been intercepted by the Saudi military.

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervened in Yemen’s war in 2015 to try to unseat the Houthis and restore the internationally recognised government-in-exile.