Saudi-led coalition says intercepted four Houthi armed drones

DUBAI (Reuters) – The Saudi-led military coalition engaged in Yemen said on Sunday it had intercepted and destroyed four armed drones launched by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement towards southern Saudi Arabia.

A bomb-laden unmanned aerial vehicle was intercepted early on Sunday, coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki said in a statement on Saudi state media.

Coalition forces later intercepted three drones, also launched towards southern Saudi Arabia with the aim of targeting “civilians and civilian objects”, Malki said in follow up statements which put the total at four.

The coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 against the Houthis after the group ousted the Saudi-backed government from power in the capital Sanaa, in a conflict widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Malki said the coalition would continue to take measures to “neutralise and destroy” Houthi weapons’ capabilities in accordance with international law.

The military alliance has in the past conducted air strikes on Houthi military sites in Yemen in response to Houthi cross-border missile and drone attacks.

(Reporting by Ghaida Ghantous in Dubai and Nayera Abdallah and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Alexander Smith and Susan Fenton)