Saudi-backed forces claim Red Sea gains as Yemen offensive intensifies

Yemen's civil war entered a new and sharper phase on Monday when pro-government forces, backed by Saudi Arabia, launched what they called Operation Yemen Dawn—a broad offensive aimed at reclaiming territory held by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement. The stated goal was ambitious: to retake all land the Houthis controlled and, as the head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council put it, to liberate the country from what he termed the Houthi terrorist militia. The timing was significant. A fragile four-year ceasefire had begun to crack in July, when the Houthis announced a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia and started firing missiles and drones at Saudi airports, oil facilities, and tankers in the Red Sea. Last month, the Houthis had launched their own offensive along Yemen's southwestern coast, seizing control of strategic areas including the port city of Mokha and the island of Perim, which overlook the Bab al-Mandab Strait—one of the world's most critical shipping channels.

On Monday, as the new offensive began, the pro-government military issued statements claiming significant gains. They said forces from the National Shield, Giants Brigades, and Tihama Resistance had captured Mokha with the help of Saudi air strikes. They also claimed to have seized Dhubab airport, located 45 kilometers to the south, and to have secured the Bab al-Mandab Strait itself. But the reporting fractured almost immediately. Four government sources told Reuters that pro-government forces had only reached Mokha's outskirts late Monday, with Houthi fighters retreating. Military sources speaking to AFP refused to confirm the city's capture altogether, saying instead that their forces had taken control of the Dhubab airfield and cut the road connecting Dhubab to the Bab al-Mandab area. The Houthis, through their own media channels, denied that government forces had made any advances at Dhubab. The gap between official claims and ground reality—a pattern familiar in Yemen's long conflict—was immediate and substantial.

The Houthis responded to the offensive with strikes of their own. Their military spokesman announced that ballistic missiles and drones had been launched at Saudi Aramco oil facilities in Riyadh and in the Khurais area, as well as at Riyadh's international airport and Abha airport. Satellite imagery verified by the BBC showed thick, dark smoke rising from the Aramco Riyadh Refinery on Saturday and from the Khurais Central Processing Facility on Sunday, consistent with strike damage. The Houthis said they were retaliating for the Saudi blockade of ports and airports in their territory and for an air strike on Sanaa airport that they attributed to Saudi Arabia. They also said they posed no threat to international shipping through the Red Sea but would continue targeting Saudi vessels. Saudi Arabia condemned the attacks and called on the UN Security Council's permanent members to support Yemen's government.

The offensive also triggered a broader regional response. Turkey and Pakistan, both allies of Saudi Arabia, held an emergency meeting in Riyadh on Monday and agreed to rapidly deploy military forces to the kingdom under their mutual defense pact, known as the Mecca defence agreement. A Saudi-led military coalition said its fighter jets were providing continuous air support to pro-government forces and had destroyed 324 high-value targets since the offensive began. The Houthis' seizure of the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the previous month had already contributed to a surge in global oil prices, because Saudi Arabia had been routing oil exports through the Red Sea since the US and Israel's conflict with Iran had effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. The new offensive, and the Houthi response, threatened to intensify that disruption.

The human toll was already mounting. Saudi air strikes killed a schoolgirl and a woman in the Sanhan and Saawan districts of Sanaa on Monday, according to Houthi-run media. Since fighting escalated in August, at least 959 people had been killed and 5,000 injured in Yemen, according to the government's health ministry. The UN reported that 197,000 people had been displaced. The Houthi-run Humanitarian Operations Co-ordination Centre warned civilian airlines that Saudi airspace, except for the skies above Mecca and Medina, was no longer safe because it had become a theater of operations. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the Houthi cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia and said he was deeply concerned by the sharp escalation in fighting. Yemen's civil war, which began in 2014 when the Houthis ousted the government from the capital Sanaa, had already devastated the country. The Saudi-led coalition's intervention in 2015 had only prolonged and deepened the conflict. Now, with Operation Yemen Dawn underway and the Houthis striking back, the question was not whether the fighting would intensify further, but how much more the country and its people could endure.