Yemeni government forces said they drove Houthi forces from areas around the Bab al-Mandab Strait, including the port city of Mocha, Dhubab airport and Al-Omari military camp. The National reported that government forces recaptured Mokha, but military sources cited by AFP stopped short of confirming an official announcement. They said pro-government forces had cut off the only supply route to the port.
Fighting around the Bab al-Mandab
According to The National, the reported advance came during a Sunday offensive involving 100 jets. The Yemeni military said it carried out more than 1,000 strikes and launched an offensive against Sanaa. The Saudi-led coalition, which supports the internationally recognised government, said 100 warplanes flew sorties at dawn.
The military also said it expelled Houthi forces from several areas in Taiz, in southwestern Yemen, where deadly fighting had surged in recent days. The United Nations says the fighting has displaced more than 184,000 people. In recent weeks, it’s become the most active front in the Middle East war.
The Houthis previously controlled much of northern Yemen, including Sanaa and the western city of Hodeida. Last month, they seized swathes of coastline along the Red Sea and the key Bab al-Mandab Strait, in what the report described as Yemen’s deadliest fighting in years. Since Yemen’s civil war flared back to life, the Houthis have also attacked neighbouring Saudi Arabia and declared a maritime blockade on its ships.
Strikes and claims across the region
On Monday, the Houthis said they struck Riyadh’s international airport, an oil refinery and other sites in Saudi Arabia. Loud explosions rattled the Saudi capital that evening. A Houthi spokesman said the group hit King Khalid International Airport, a refinery belonging to state oil giant Aramco and other targets in the kingdom’s south.
The Saudi-led coalition said it destroyed Houthi targets on the Red Sea coast. Turki Al-Malki, the coalition’s spokesman, said on X that naval forces hit “military targets” belonging to the Houthis in Hodeida. He said they “destroyed weapons depots, facilities storing booby-trapped boats and naval mines” and “thwarted a planned attack” targeting waterways in the southern Red Sea.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the sharp escalation in fighting” and condemned “the continued Houthi cross-border attacks” on Saudi Arabia. Houthi attacks have repeatedly targeted Saudi oil infrastructure and its tankers in the Red Sea.
Regional military commitments and oil
Representatives of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey met in Riyadh on Monday under a joint defence agreement signed in August. The pact commits them to come to each other’s aid in the event of an attack. The three countries said they had agreed “to take the necessary measures to provide the agreed military forces and capabilities and ensure their rapid deployment in the Kingdom”. Their statement didn’t specify what role the troops would fill.
A source in the Saudi energy sector told AFP that an attack on Sunday again halted pumping through the East-West pipeline to the Red Sea. Since Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the wider Middle East war, the pipeline has served as a key conduit for the kingdom’s exports.
Crude prices were already soaring because of the war before the Houthis began targeting the world’s largest oil exporter. On Monday, Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser warned that global oil stockpiles were “scarily thin” because of the war. “The system is already straining,” Nasser told the Energy Intelligence Forum in London. The National also reported U.S. Senator Marco Rubio’s position that Saudi Arabia had the right to defend itself from the Houthis.