Saudi Arabian authorities issued air-raid alerts for Riyadh early Saturday, the first in the capital since the height of the US-Iran war in March and April.<\/p>\n
The kingdom\u2019s early warning system issued emergency alerts at 4am (11am AEST) and again at 6am for residents of the capital, without giving further details. The Saudi civil defence said the danger had lifted soon after in both cases.<\/p>\n
Other areas across Saudi Arabia received similar warnings overnight, including the Red Sea cities of Jeddah and Yanbu and Farasan Island in the Red Sea.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia has come under renewed attack this month, with the Houthis, an Iran-backed group based in Yemen, targeting western towns and energy infrastructure. Last week, the Saudi government said a drone attack emanating from Iraq \u2014 which has several pro-Tehran militias \u2014 caused the vital East-West pipeline to be shut down.<\/p>\n
Yemen\u2019s Houthis have been carrying out almost daily strikes against Saudi Arabia in the last month, with one attack causing a death and several injuries in Taif on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The group has launched a push recently to exert further control on the Red Sea\u2019s Bab al-Mandeb and made significant gains on Yemen\u2019s western coast, taking over the port city of Mokha and a series of islands close to the strait.<\/p>\n
The Iran-backed militia has also said it was imposing a blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea, and hit several ships in the waterway, which has served as a key oil export route for the kingdom since the war between the US and Iran brought traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to a near halt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabian authorities issued air-raid alerts for Riyadh early Saturday, the first in the capital since the height…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99],"class_list":["post-897764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}