DUBAI, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Tuesday they had launched an attack on Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura oil refinery, the biggest in the kingdom, located on the Gulf west of the Strait of Hormuz.
The group's military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a statement that the ballistic missile attack caused a fire at the site. The Saudi authorities have not confirmed the attack.
The Houthi militia have escalated their attacks on Saudi Arabia since September, opening another volatile front in the wider US-Israeli war on Iran.
Nearly all of Saudi Arabia's oil exports flow through two main ports: Ras Tanura in the Gulf and Yanbu on the Red Sea, which the Houthis have attacked in the past.
Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter, that Saudi Arabia had contained a fire near the oil terminal at Ras Tanura in the early hours of the day.
(Reporting by Yasmine GhaniaWriting by Nayera AbdallahEditing by Michael Georgy and Peter Graff)