Iran on Friday denied involvement in attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, a day after Saudi Arabia accused Tehran of encouraging the group’s latest escalation against the kingdom.

Since Yemen’s civil war flared up again in July, the pro-Iran Houthis have repeatedly targeted Saudi interests, including Red Sea tankers, oil facilities and Riyadh’s international airport. An attack on the airport last week killed 13 people.

A Saudi-led military coalition has supported Yemen’s internationally recognised government for more than a decade. On Friday, the coalition reported intercepting additional missiles and drones as Saudi Arabia continued to face sustained attacks by the Houthis.

A day earlier, a Saudi foreign ministry official accused Iran of having “encouraged” the escalation, a claim Tehran rejected.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran rejects any claim that Iran has played a role in Yemeni (Houthi) operations,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said in a statement.

“Yemen’s armed forces act according to their own interests and assessments, and such claims are not credible to those familiar with relations between Iran and its friends. Nevertheless, Iran does not consider an escalation of tensions to be in the interests of any party,” he added.

Saudi deputy minister for public diplomacy Dr Rayed Krimly said the Houthis had rejected an offer to meet in Oman at the beginning of the latest round of hostilities.

Baqaei, however, reiterated Tehran’s offer to mediate between the two sides, saying Iran “has always been ready to use its good offices to help end the hostilities”.

On Friday, a spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition said its forces had “intercepted and destroyed three drones in the southern area and Riyadh… and two cruise missiles over the Red Sea”.

He added that “in the past hours, we intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile over Yanbu”, a city on the Red Sea coast that is home to the terminus of a major oil pipeline.

Houthi attacks have increased since the group launched a lightning offensive in Yemen in September, seizing strategic territory held by government forces along the Red Sea coast, overlooking a major chokepoint for global shipping.

The pressure on Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, comes as global energy markets were already unsettled by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz at the outset of the wider Middle East war in February.

Yemeni government forces, backed by Saudi air support, have launched a counteroffensive to retake areas seized by the Houthis but have so far failed to reverse the group’s gains.

On Friday, the local security office in Aden, the government’s interim capital, said two missiles had landed within the perimeter of the city’s airport. It described the incident as “the second incident of its kind in less than a week” and said no one had been killed.

The Houthis, in a statement attributed to a military source, said the attack targeted “the Saudi forces’ command headquarters” as well as a weapons depot.

Yemen’s information ministry said a Yemenia Airways flight travelling from Aden to Cairo narrowly escaped being hit.

The ministry said the aircraft was “preparing for takeoff at the very moment when the terrorist Houthi militia targeted the airport with two missiles that landed approximately 500 metres from the aircraft and about 100 metres from the centre of the runway”.

“What occurred was not merely an assault on a civilian airport, but a direct threat to the lives of passengers and flight crews, to aviation safety, and a grave violation of international laws and norms,” the statement said.

A day earlier, the Houthis launched a deadly missile attack on the presidential palace in Aden, killing five people and injuring 16 others, according to the health minister.

Yemeni Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani condemned the “cowardly” attack on X, describing it as a “continuation of (the Houthis’) criminal pattern”.

A Yemeni government minister, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Houthis had struck command centres for Yemeni and Saudi coalition forces housed within the palace complex.

Media affiliated with the Houthis said the attack targeted “the headquarters of military operations, led by Saudi officers, at the Al-Maashiq Palace in Aden”.