Yemeni responses affect the Saudi oil

YemenExtra

Y.A

Oil futures moved up Thursday to trade near the day’s highs, buoyed by news of heightened tensions in the Middle East.

Tasnim New Agency reported that Yemeni troops launched retaliatory missile attacks against Saudi troops in Jizan and Haradh, Saudi Arabia.

It added that Yemen’s al-Masirah news website reported that more than 30 Saudi troops were killed and injured after the missile attacks.

“Oil got a pop on this headline. It complicates U.S/Iran talks as well,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group. October West Texas Intermediate oil CLV19, -1.99% rose 81 cents, or 1.4%, to trade at $57.05 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after a $57.29 high. November Brent crude BRNX19, -1.64% traded at $61.80, up $1.10, or 1.8%.

“Oil prices have fallen because of rocket attacks by the army and popular committees” the Financial Times reported.

The news stressed that Saudi oil prices recorded a decline of 3% after these strikes.

In March 2015, the US -backed –Saudi-led coalition started  a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people and  prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, the war has yielded little to that effect.

Despite the coalition claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.