BOILING POINT

Suspected ‘Kamikaze Drone’ Attack Explodes Three Oil Tankers in UAE

The attack in Abu Dhabi was claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

A suspected drone attack in Abu Dhabi on Monday—which led to three oil tankers exploding and a fire at the airport—has been claimed by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The attack recalls a 2019 drone strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure said to have been carried out by as many as 20 Iranian-supplied drones. This time the damage seems more limited: Reuters reported that police told the state news agency that “three fuel tankers had exploded in the industrial Musaffah area... and that a fire had broken out at a construction site at Abu Dhabi International Airport.” The statement added: “Initial investigations found parts of a small plane that could possibly be a drone at both sites that could have caused the explosion and the fire.” Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and the UAE and its Saudi allies have been waging a war against Houthi rebels in Yemen since 2015. The rebels are reported to have been equipped with “kamikaze drones” supplied by Tehran.