Iranian strikes caused “extensive damage” at the world’s largest gas hub in Qatar, the Gulf state’s energy firm said Thursday, and an AFP journalist saw a vast fire illuminating the night sky visible from roughly 30 kilometres away.
Earlier, Tehran had vowed to target energy infrastructure across the Gulf following a US-Israeli attack on its own facilities.
The Gulf has borne the brunt of Iran’s reprisals for the US-Israeli strikes that sparked the Middle East war, with Tehran targeting US assets but also striking energy facilities, to the fury of the hydrocarbon-rich monarchies.
And the attacks came as Saudi Arabia was hosting foreign ministers from across the Arab and Islamic world for talks in Riyadh to discuss the fallout from the Middle East war.
QatarEnergy said emergency teams had been “deployed immediately to contain the resulting fires,” at the Ras Laffan facility on the tiny Gulf state’s north coast after it was “the subject of missile attacks”.
In a statement Qatar’s foreign ministry condemned what called a “brutal Iranian attack targeting Ras Laffan” saying the targeting represented a “direct threat to its national security”.
Doha’s defence ministry later said its air defences intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting Ras Laffan with no reported casualties and civil defence said the fire had been brought under control.
The incident came hours after US-Israeli strikes hit Iranian facilities on the opposite side of the massive South Pars gas reservoir shared by Iran and Qatar prompting Iran’s president to warn of “uncontrollable consequences” of attacks on energy infrastructure.
“This will complicate the situation and could have uncontrollable consequences, the scope of which could engulf the entire world,” Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X, adding that such attacks “will yield nothing” for Iran’s foes the US and Israel.
Iran launched salvos of drones and missiles towards the Gulf states on Wednesday evening with several strong blasts heard in the Saudi capital Riyadh, according to AFP journalists, and a missile threat intercepted in the UAE, according to authorities.
Four people were injured when shrapnel from a ballistic missile interception fell on a residential area of the Saudi capital Riyadh on Wednesday, the civil defence said
Riyadh’s defence ministry said it intercepted four ballistic missiles on Wednesday with a fragment falling near a refinery south of the Saudi capital.
Multiple drones were also intercepted and destroyed as they headed towards Saudi gas facilities in the kingdom’s the Eastern Province.
Earlier, Qatar had condemned the attacks on Iran’s gas facilities calling them “dangerous and irresponsible”.
Foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari warned that: “Targeting energy infrastructure constitutes a threat to global energy security, to the peoples of the region, and to its environment.”
In a rare rebuke, the UAE also criticised the targeting of the Iranian facilities as a “dangerous escalation”.
“Targeting energy infrastructure poses a direct threat to global energy security,” Abu Dhabi’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
