Houthi fighters have said they used drones and missiles to attack a military base in southern Saudi Arabia, as Yemen’s Saudi-backed government described the rebels’ swift advance along the Red Sea coast as a “painful” development in a new front in the Iran war.
The attack at the southern Sharurah base targeted “weapons depots and command and control centres that are managing the aggression against our nation and people”, a Houthi military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, wrote on X.
The date of the operation was not specified. The Houthis’ capture of a key port city and an island on the Bab al-Mandab strait, a crucial shipping alternative to the strait of Hormuz, in recent days has alarmed markets and Yemeni civilians who fear a return to devastating civil war.
The Saudi civil defence force said overnight that a projectile had fallen in al-Tawwal governorate near the border with Yemen along the Red Sea, injuring two people and damaging a mosque and several other buildings. The statement blamed the Houthis. It also said sirens went off in Sharurah governorate but did not report any damage.
Yemeni government forces, which are backed by Saudi Arabia, said they had struck Houthi fighters in the Red Sea city of Mocha, and later attacked other Houthi positions in the south-western part of the country.
“Air force of the armed forces targeted positions and barracks of the terrorist Houthi group with three airstrikes” in the Taiz region, the Yemeni military said on Sunday.
A senior government official in Yemen said its forces would return to the Red Sea coast and fight back, after people fleeing the Houthi advance told the Associated Press they saw forces withdrawing and urging people to run.
Sultan al-Arada, a member of the ruling presidential council, described the collapse of government forces in Mocha and elsewhere on Yemen’s west coast as “painful and regrettable”.
Al-Arada, who is also the governor of Yemen’s central Marib province, said in a televised interview broadcast late on Saturday night that forces “are currently regrouping and will return to the battle in one form or another”. The renewed fighting in Yemen has killed more than 500 people, according to sources on both sides.
The US news site Axios reported that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, twice called Donald Trump to request strikes on the Houthis last week, but that the request was rejected. Trump on Saturday acknowledged the conversation but did not say whether Washington would take any action. “Everything’s gonna work out fine and dandy,” he told reporters.
The clashes follow a week-long Houthi offensive that culminated in the group capturing the remainder of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and several strategic islands, cementing their hold on the Bab al-Mandab strait at the sea’s southern entrance.
The waterway has become an important artery for Saudi Arabian oil exports after Iran largely cut off shipments through the Gulf with its blockade on the strait of Hormuz at the start of the Middle East war.
Reuters reported last week that the dramatic Houthi advance down Yemen’s Red Sea coast came with direct guidance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Iran describes the Houthis as an ally but publicly denies giving them military direction.
State-run Iranian media said on Sunday that an Iranian commercial vessel was struck early in the morning off Qeshm Island near the strait of Hormuz, with one person killed and four wounded.
The state-run IRNA news agency quoted the Qeshm governor as blaming a “terrorist enemy”. There was no immediate comment by the US military, which has struck Iranian-flagged vessels during its blockade of Iranian ports.
Several explosions were reported overnight around Qeshm, the largest island in the Hormuz strait. The island, about 14 miles (22km) from the port city of Bandar Abbas, is key to Iran asserting control over the strait of Hormuz.
Separately, maritime trackers received new reports of an attack on a ship in the strait of Hormuz on Sunday, adding to concerns about Iran-related threats to energy supplies after Saudi Arabia shut down a vital oil pipeline.
The British navy-affiliated agency UKMTO said it had a report of a projectile hitting a vessel as it moved through the strait, later adding that a fire had broken out and local authorities were evacuating those onboard.
The Houthis, mountain fighters who seized the capital, Sana’a, 12 years ago and withstood years of deadly Saudi airstrikes during Yemen’s civil war, said on Saturday evening that over the past 48 hours, “Saudi enemy aircraft conducted 129 airstrikes” on areas under their control.
Yemen’s civil war, which began in 2014, had been dormant since a ceasefire in 2022 but roared back to life in July. Saudi Arabia first entered the war on the side of Yemen’s internationally recognised government in 2015 and continues to support the Aden-based administration.
The civil war has uprooted millions of people, and the latest fighting has led even more to flee their homes. The fall of Mocha to the Houthis on Thursday drove many residents to Aden, where the internationally recognised Yemeni government is based.
The UN’s migration agency said on Saturday that 76,000 people had fled the fighting since July, a figure that had quadrupled since last week. It said on Sunday that more than 2,000 had landed in Djibouti this week.
