Two foreign workers have been killed and two others injured after debris from an intercepted drone fell at a major Saudi Aramco oil field, the Saudi energy ministry has said. A Pakistani national is among the injured.
The drone tried to attack a facility at the Shaybah oil field on Wednesday morning. Saudi air defences destroyed it in the air before it could hit the site.
But falling debris landed on a contractor’s vehicle outside the field’s boundary. The vehicle caught fire.
The two men killed were a Filipino national and a Nepali national. The injured are a Pakistani national and an Indian national. The Indian embassy in Riyadh said it is in touch with the Saudi authorities and will give its citizen all necessary help.
The energy ministry said work at the oil field was not affected. It offered condolences to the families of the dead men and wished the injured a speedy recovery.
Shaybah is one of the largest oil fields in the world. It sits deep in the Rub’ al Khali desert in the south-east of the kingdom, near the border with the UAE, and produces around one million barrels of oil a day.
The attack comes during a wave of strikes on Saudi airports and oil sites by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Earlier this month, an attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 300. Last month, debris from another intercepted drone killed a Yemeni resident in the kingdom.
The incident adds to the rising tension across the Gulf, where the United States and Israel are reported to be drawing up plans for fresh strikes on Iran.
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