Yemen’s Houthis have claimed responsibility for an attack on the main airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital, while rejecting government claims that their forces have lost ground as fighting across the country intensifies.
Government forces said yesterday that a counter-offensive had driven the Houthis from the Bab al-Mandab area, a vital Red Sea shipping corridor, as well as the port city of Mocha, which was captured last month.
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Neither side’s battlefield claims could be independently verified. The situation has been changing rapidly, while access for journalists remains severely restricted.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Telegram that the group continued to control all territory it had seized recently, including strategic positions along Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
Saree said Houthi forces had launched dozens of attacks in the previous few hours against government positions in Yemen’s Al-Jawf and Marib regions, as well as targets in Taiz governorate.
Late last night, the Houthis also said they had struck Riyadh airport and a refinery operated by Saudi state oil giant Aramco.
Loud explosions were heard across the Saudi capital yesterday. Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said at least three people had been wounded in attacks on Jazan and Najran airports, both near the Yemeni border, the previous day.
Saudi Arabia, the principal foreign backer of Yemen’s government, has been providing air support for the counter-offensive launched by government forces.
The Houthis meanwhile said a Saudi airstrike had killed six members of one family as the conflict deepened.
The strike on a village in Hajjah governorate, which borders Saudi Arabia, “caused the deaths of six people from the same family”, including the mother, father and four children aged between three and eight, the Houthi health ministry said, according to the group’s official press agency.
‘Victories on several fronts’
Yemen’s government forces said last night that they had secured “victories on several fronts”. Military sources aligned with the government, however, stopped short of officially confirming the capture of Mocha, saying only that forces had severed the sole supply route leading to the area.
The sources also said the Houthis had been pushed out of several locations in Taiz in southwestern Yemen, where clashes have intensified in recent days.
The Yemeni government has pledged to retake all territory held by the Houthis — areas that contain most of the country’s population and that the group has controlled in large part for more than a decade.
Yemen’s civil war erupted again in July after years of relative calm, creating a new front in the broader Middle East conflict that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February.
Last month, the Houthis captured Yemen’s entire western coastline along the Red Sea in the deadliest fighting the country had seen in years.
Since then, the group has repeatedly targeted oil and military facilities in Saudi Arabia and announced a maritime blockade against Saudi ships.
Pakistan and Turkey have promised to send troops to Saudi Arabia under a mutual defence agreement, following weeks of Houthi attacks.
The conflict has already produced a severe humanitarian crisis. More than 184,000 people have been forced from their homes since the renewed fighting began, according to the United Nations.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the sharp escalation in fighting”. He condemned “the continued Houthi cross-border attacks” against Saudi Arabia.
