Houthi rebels threaten more attacks on Saudi oil systems

The Houthi rebels in Yemen on Monday warned of more attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure, two days after drone strikes that interrupted much of the kingdom's oil production heightened tensions between Iran and the United States.

American officials said that Iran was responsible for the attacks on Saturday, the most audacious and damaging blow to Saudi Arabia in the four and a half years of Yemen's civil war, and have cast doubt on whether they were launched from Houthi territory in Yemen, The New York Times reported.

The Trump Administration had previously blamed Iran for the actions of the Houthis, and United Nations experts say that Iran has supplied the group with drones and missiles that have greatly expanded its offensive capacity.

A Saudi military spokesman, Colonel Turki al-Malki, said at a news conference in Riyadh that Iranian weapons were used in the attacks on Saturday and that they did not originate in Yemen.

Colonel al-Malki said that "the investigation is continuing, and all indications are that weapons used in both attacks came from Iran."

The Saudis were seeking to determine "where they were fired from," he added.

However, Iran, earlier today, denied any involvement in the attacks and insisted that the Houthis had carried out the strikes using drones without making any reference to whether Iranian equipment or training played a role.

The Houthis claimed to have used 10 drones in the Saturday attack. American officials said that there were 17 points of impact.

The rebel group has launched missiles and drone attacks into Saudi territory before, but never anything on that scale.

The attacks on Saturday forced the shutdown of facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais, which process most of the crude oil produced by Saudi Arabia, which supplies about a tenth of the worldwide total.

Experts have said that it is unclear whether the Saudi equipment will be out of commission long enough to affect global oil supplies, but prices rose sharply in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.