Saudi Arabia says Yemen rebels target its energy facilities
Dubai(AP): Yemen's Houthi rebels unleashed a barrage of drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia early on Sunday that targeted a liquified natural gas plant, water desalination plant, oil facility and power station, Saudi state-run media reported.
The attacks did not cause casualties, the Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen said, but damaged civilian vehicles and homes in the area.
The salvo marked the latest escalation in Houthi cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia as peace talks remain stalled and the conflict that has laid waste to much of Yemen since 2015 rages on.
Yehia Sarie, a spokesman for Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels said the group had launched a wide and large military operation into the depth of Saudi Arabia, without immediately elaborating.
The military coalition said it thwarted an attack on a liquified gas plant at a petrochemicals complex in the Red Sea port of Yanbu run by the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., better known as Aramco. It wasn't immediately clear if the attack had inflicted any damage on the plant.
Other aerial strikes targeted a power station in the country's southwest, a desalination facility in Al-Shaqeeq on the Red Sea coast, an Aramco terminal in the southern border town of Jizan and a gas station in the southern city of Khamis Mushait, the coalition said.
The extent of damage was unclear. The official Saudi Press Agency posted various photos of firetrucks dousing leaping flames with water hoses, as well as wrecked cars and craters in the ground allegedly left by the series of drone and ballistic missile strikes.
The barrage comes after the Saudi-based Gulf Cooperation Council invited Yemen's warring sides for talks in Riyadh aimed at ending the war an offer dismissed out of hand by the Houthis, who demanded that negotiations take place in a neutral country.
Peace talks have floundered since the Houthis have tried to capture oil-rich Marib, one of the last remaining strongholds of the Saudi-backed Yemeni government in the country's north.
The ongoing war has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with a recent UN report estimating that hundreds of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced as a result of the conflict.
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Man sets fire to gas cylinder on truck in Kerala's Kottayam, held
Kottayam(Kerala) (PTI): A 33-year-old man climbed onto a parked truck carrying cooking gas cylinders and set fire to one of them near Thalayolaparambu in the small hours of Saturday, police said.
The incident occurred around 12.30 am, they said.
The fire and rescue personnel soon arrived at the scene and extinguished the fire, averting a major disaster.
According to police, the man is suspected to be under mental distress as he claimed that he was walking from Ernakulam to his home in Marangattupilly here when he saw the truck on the roadside.
An FIR under sections 329(3)(criminal trespass),324(2)(mischief),326(f)(mischief by injury, inundation, fire or explosive substance) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita was lodged against him.
Police said that the man was formally arrested, but will be released on station bail as the offences he is accused of are bailable.
"His family is here at the station and he will be released to them," the officer said.
In the FIR, police have said that the man opened the seal of one of the gas cylinders and set fire to it with the knowledge that his act was dangerous to those living in the area.
According to the company transporting the cooking gas cylinders, it suffered a loss of Rs 2,300 in the incident.
