Drone wounds 8 at Saudi airport; Kuwait deplores attack

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DUBAI, Aug 31, (Agencies): A bomb-laden drone on Tuesday crashed into an airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia, wounding eight people and damaging a civilian plane, Saudi state television reported, the latest assault on the kingdom amid its grinding war in neighboring Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen blamed the assault on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, saying it was the second such strike on Abha airport in the last 24 hours. An earlier ballistic missile attack scattered shrapnel across the tarmac but caused no casualties.

The Houthis did not claim responsibility for the strikes and its military spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment. Saudi forces said they downed the drone, and that their interception sent fragments flying that punctured small holes in a passenger plane, shattered glass and wounded citizens of Bangladesh, Nepal and India.

One Bangladeshi man remained in critical condition, the coalition said, without offering further details about the assault. Kuwait, meanwhile, condemned in the “strongest possible terms” the drone strikes carried out by the Houthi militia on Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport, saying such transgressions run counter to international laws. The international community needs to act “promptly and decisively” against the perpetrators of these violent acts, said a foreign ministry statement, underlining Kuwait’s unflinching support for the measures taken by Riyadh to protect its security and stability. The attack comes just days after missiles and drones slammed into a key military base in Yemen’s south, killing at least 30 Saudi-backed Yemeni troops and marking one of the deadliest attacks in the country’s yearslong civil war. No one claimed responsibility for the strike, which bore the hallmarks the Iranian-supported rebels.

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