Saudi Arabia: Missile intercepted near Riyadh
November 5, 2017 by admin
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AFP
The King Khalid International Airport is located north of Riyadh
Saudi Arabia says it has intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Yemen, after a loud explosion was heard near Riyadh airport on Saturday evening.
The missile was destroyed over the capital and fragments landed in the airport area, officials quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency said.
A TV channel linked to Houthi rebels in Yemen said the missile was fired at the King Khalid International Airport.
The civil aviation authority said that air traffic was not disrupted.
Saudi forces have reported shooting down Houthi missiles in the past , though none has come so close to a major population centre.
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“The missile was launched indiscriminately to target the civilian and populated areas,” said Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen.
“Shattered fragments from the intercepted missile landed in an uninhabited area of the airport and there were no injuries.”
Witnesses reported seeing parts of the missile in the airport’s car park, Saudi broadcaster Al-Arabiya reported.
Residents in the north of Riyadh said their windows were rattled by a loud blast on Saturday evening that was followed by the roar of low-flying aircraft.
The Houthi-run Saba News in Yemen said the missile had been a Burkan H2.
The rebel group is believed to have access to a stockpile of Scud ballistic missiles and home-grown variants. Saudi forces have previously brought them down with Patriot surface-to-air missiles bought from the US.
The Houthis fired a missile towards Riyadh in May, a day before US President Donald Trump was due to arrive in the city for a visit, but it was shot down 200km (120 miles) from the capital.
Yemen has been devastated by a war between forces loyal to the internationally recognised government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied to the Houthi rebel movement.
Saudi Arabia is leading a campaign to defeat the Houthis, and is the biggest power in an international air coalition that has bombed the rebel group since 2015.
On Wednesday a suspected strike by the Saudi-led coalition killed at least 26 people at a hotel and market in northern Yemen, medics and local officials said.
The coalition, which rights groups say has bombed schools, hospitals, markets and residential areas, said it struck a “legitimate military target”.
UN-brokered talks have failed to bring an end to the bloodshed in Yemen, which has claimed more than 8,600 lives and injured nearly 50,000 since the Saudi-led campaign began.
The conflict has also left 20.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, created the world’s largest food security emergency, and led to a cholera outbreak that is believed to have affected 884,000 people and caused 2,184 deaths.
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Saudi Arabia Arrests 11 Princes, Including Billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal
November 5, 2017 by admin
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The king had decreed the creation of a powerful new anti-corruption committee, headed by the crown prince, only hours before the committee ordered the arrests.
Al Arabiya said that the anticorruption committee has the right to investigate, arrest, ban from travel, or freeze the assets of anyone it deems corrupt.
The Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, the de facto royal hotel, was evacuated on Saturday, stirring rumors that it would be used to house detained royals. The airport for private planes was closed, arousing speculation that the crown prince was seeking to block rich businessmen from fleeing before more arrests.
Prince Alwaleed was giving interviews to the Western news media as recently as late last month about subjects like so-called crypto currencies and Saudi Arabia’s plans for a public offering of shares in its state oil company, Aramco.
He has also recently sparred publicly with President Donald J. Trump. The prince was part of a group of investors who bought control of the Plaza Hotel in New York from Mr. Trump, and he also bought an expensive yacht from him as well. But in a twitter message in 2015 the prince called Mr. Trump “a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America.”
.@realDonaldTrump
You are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America.
Withdraw from the U.S presidential race as you will never win.—
الوليد بن طلال (@Alwaleed_Talal)
Dec. 11, 2015
Mr. Trump fired back, also on Twitter, that “Dopey Prince @Alwaleed_Talal wants to control our U.S. politicians with daddy’s money.”
Dopey Prince @Alwaleed_Talal wants to control our U.S. politicians with daddy’s money. Can’t do it when I get elected. #Trump2016
—
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Dec. 12, 2015
As president, Mr. Trump has developed a warm, mutually supportive relationship with the ascendant crown prince, who has rocketed from near obscurity in recent years to taking control of the country’s most important functions.
Credit
Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But his swift rise has also divided Saudis. Many applaud his vision, crediting him with addressing the economic problems facing the kingdom and laying out a plan to move beyond its dependence on oil.
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Others see him as brash, power-hungry and inexperienced, and they resent him for bypassing his elder relatives and concentrating so much power in one branch of the family.
At least three senior White House officials, including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were reportedly in Saudi Arabia last month for meetings that were undisclosed at the time.
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Before sparring with Mr. Trump, Prince Alwaleed was publicly rebuffed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who rejected his $10 million donation for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York because the prince had also criticized American foreign policy.
As powerful as the billionaire is, he is something of an outsider within the royal family — not a dissident, but an unusually outspoken figure on a variety of issues. He openly supported women driving long before the kingdom said it would grant them the right to do so, and he has long employed women in his orbit.
In 2015 he pledged to donate his fortune of $32 billion to charity after his death. It was unclear Saturday whether Saudi Arabia’s corruption committee might seek to confiscate any of his assets.
Saudi Arabia is an executive monarchy without a written Constitution or independent government institutions like a Parliament or courts, so accusations of corruption are difficult to evaluate. The boundaries between the public funds and the wealth of the royal family are murky at best, and corruption, as other countries would describe it, is believed to be widespread.
The arrests came a few hours after the king replaced the minister in charge of the Saudi national guard, Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, who controlled the last of the three Saudi armed forces not yet considered to be under control of the crown prince.
The king named Crown Prince Mohammed the minister of defense in 2015. Earlier this year, the king removed Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as head of the interior ministry, placing him under house arrest and extending the crown prince’s influence over the interior ministry’s troops, which act as a second armed force.
Rumors have swirled since then that King Salman and his favorite son would soon move against Prince Mutaib, commander of the third armed force and himself a former contender for the crown.
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