Yemen’s National Defense Council on Saturday held an emergency meeting, headed by President Rashad Al-Alimi, to deal with the repercussions of a Houthi drone attack on a southern oil terminal in Hadramout province a day earlier. During the meeting, the council took a number of “firm decisions to deter such criminal attacks” and authorized the government to immediately implement them in accordance with a “time-line defensive, diplomatic and economic plan to protect the interests of the Yemeni people” and thwart all destructive attempts by the Iran-backed group, Yemen’s Saba news agency reported. The meeting, which was attended by the Presidential Council, heads of legislative, executive and advisory authorities, and the governors of Hadramout and Shabwa, heard a number of briefings and reports from members of the defense council and both governors, and the options available to deal with these threats that “target international peace and security, and exacerbate the human suffering of the Yemeni people,” Saba said. Yemen’s internationally-recognized government said on Friday that two drones launched by the Houthis attacked the Al-Dhabba and Al-Nashima oil ports in Hadramout and Shabwa, in the first major escalation since the warring sides failed to renew an UN-brokered truce earlier this month. The council called on the international community to assume its responsibilities to confront “this dangerous escalation by the Houthi militia and their supporters by targeting civilian objects and economic installations in a premeditated war crime that requires firm punishment by designating these militias as an international terrorist group and taking all subsequent measures.” It warned that this escalation could relieve the Yemeni government from all the obligations the Houthi militia have abandoned, including the Stockholm Agreement, the collapsed truce, and other facilitations, and vowed to secure all means to limit the collateral impacts on citizens in the militia-controlled areas.