BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces have found drone launchers near the border with Iran, security sources told AFP on Saturday, after an attack on a Saudi pipeline that Riyadh and Baghdad said was launched from Iraq.

 

A security official said that "security forces found drone launchers near the Iraq-Iran border in the al-Tib" remote region in the southern Missan province. A second security official gave the same account.

 

Saudi authorities said Friday drones launched from Iraq led to the temporary closure of a crucial oil export route used to bypass the lockdown of the Strait of Hormuz.

 

Riyadh has increased its use of the East-West pipeline, which links Abqaiq, near the Gulf, to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, since the start of the Middle East war to bypass the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran.

 

The Saudi foreign ministry condemned "the targeting of the East-West pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions by several drones coming from Iraq, which caused human injuries and damage".

 

"The pipeline was stopped as a precaution, and the attacks resulted in some injuries," an energy ministry official told the SPA news agency earlier.

 

Satellite images from Copernicus Sentinel Data taken on Thursday showed black smoke billowing near Medina, along the general route of the East-West pipeline that carries Saudi oil to its Red Sea coast.

 

The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi confirmed the attack originated from Iraqi territory and said on X that the commander in charge of the southern province of Maysan had been dismissed.

 

The Iraqi government said it condemned "the attacks targeting our brethren in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia originated from a location within the governorate".

 

'Dangerous escalation'

 

Riyadh said that, at the Iraqi prime minister's request, it had chosen "not to respond at this stage and to support the efforts of the Iraqi government...to prevent attacks launched from Iraq against the Kingdom and neighbouring countries".

 

Riyadh previously accused Iranian-backed Iraqi militias of targeting its oil infrastructure.

 

But it stressed that the kingdom "reserves the right to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty, its security, its facilities," and its people.