Iran forcefully rejected charges by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that it was responsible for drone attacks that caused serious damage to two crucial Saudi Arabian oil installations,with the foreign minister dismissing the remarks as"max deceit,"TheNew York Times reported.
Seyed Abbas Mousavi,a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry,castigated the Saudis for their role in the war in Yemen where they have directed airstrikes with heavy civilian casualties and exacerbated a humanitarian crisis. He also ridiculed Pompeo's comments.
The semiofficial Fars news agency reported on its English-language website that Mousavi described Pompeo's allegations as"blind and fruitless remarks"that were"meaningless"in a diplomatic context.
Saudi Arabia has yet to publicly accuse Iran of involvement in the attack.
On Sunday,its Foreign Ministry urged international action to preserve the world oil supply in response to the attack,but it said nothing about assigning blame or striking back.
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The US government released satellite imagery showing what officials say are at least 19 points of impact at two Saudi energy facilities. The officials say the photos show impacts consistent with attack coming from the direction of Iran,rather than from Yemen.
The officials say additional devices,which apparently didn't reach their targets,have been recovered and are being analysed by Saudi and American intelligence agencies.
The officials are speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
Satellite images examined by The Associated Press appear to show damage at the heart of a Saudi oil processing facility targeted in a claimed drone attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels.
The images Sunday come from the European Commission's Sentinel-2 satellite.
The images appear to show black char marks in the heart of Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq oil processing facility in Buqyaq.
Those marks were not visible in a month's worth of earlier satellite images of the facility.
The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies in August identified the area with the char marks as the plant's stabilisation area.
The centre said the area's functions mean"the likelihood of a strike successfully disrupting or destroying its operations."
Neither Saudi Arabia nor the state-run oil giant Saudi Aramco have said how much damage was done to the facility.
Kuwait said it would increase security across the oil-rich small nation after an attack on oil sites in Saudi Arabia,according to a report by the state-run KUNA news agency.
KUNA said the order came from Prime Minister Jaber Al Mubarak Al Sabah,who asked officials to"tighten security measures around vital sites inside of the country."
Separately,KUNA said authorities would investigate reports of drones flying over Kuwait. It did not elaborate.
Local Kuwaiti media has reported that witnesses say they saw a drone near a presidential palace on Saturday morning,around the same time of the attacks in Saudi Arabia.
Reuters,AP,New York Times