OIC ministers condemn strike on Saudi oil network

Foreign ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Sunday condemned a drone attack against Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure which the US has blamed on Iran. The Tehran-backed Huthi rebels in neighboring Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is bogged down in a five-year war, have claimed Saturday's strikes on two plants owned by state giant Aramco.

The OIC, a 57-member pan-Islamic body, counts Iran as a member but it was not clear whether it attended the meeting, originally called to respond to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pledge to annex part of the West Bank. Instead, a statement from the group's Secretary-General Yousef al-Othaimeen, a former Saudi minister of social affairs, focused on the assault on the oil facilities, which has temporarily slashed the kingdom's crude output by half.

"The ministers expressed their condemnation of this terrorist attack and welcomed statements from regional and international organizations which have rejected this aggression designed to destabilize Saudi Arabia," he said in a statement released by Saudi state media. The ministers also expressed their solidarity with Saudi Arabia and their support for "the measures it has taken to deal with terrorism and to preserve its security and stability", he added.