ARAMCO BUILDING HIT IN DHAHRAN, FOUR WOUNDED IN RIYADH ATTACKS

Saudi Arabia said missiles fired by Yemen's Houthi movement struck an Aramco administrative building in Dhahran and wounded four people in Riyadh. A Saudi energy ministry official said the Tuesday evening attack on the Aramco building caused a "limited fire" but no casualties or fatalities. The kingdom's civil defence agency said on Wednesday that two women, a man and a child were wounded in Riyadh by debris from two intercepted Houthi cruise missiles, with 15 homes also damaged. The strikes followed a Saudi-led coalition report that it had intercepted several missiles over the capital on Tuesday evening.

The coalition, which is fighting the Houthi movement in Yemen, also said it had struck what it called Houthi "vital assets" inside Yemen during the exchange. Dhahran, where the Aramco building was hit, is a centre of Saudi Arabia's oil industry. Aramco is one of the world's largest oil producers. The energy ministry's account of no casualties at the Aramco site differed from the toll given for Riyadh, where the civil defence agency attributed the injuries to falling debris.

The strikes happened against a backdrop of wider regional tension. Two senior Iranian officials told Reuters that Iran has been deploying new tactics against vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carried about a fifth of global oil and gas trade before the conflict. The officials said Tehran has tried to use the strait as leverage over Washington since the United States and Israel struck Iran on 28 February, restricting passage and pushing up oil prices. One official said Iran adopted different tactics about ten days earlier, leading to more attacks on such vessels.