Houthis claim attack on Saudi base as fighting flares with Yemeni forces

Iran-allied Houthis say drones and missiles used in attack that targeted ‘weapons depots and command and control centres’ in southern Saudi Arabia

Houthi fighters have said they used drones and missiles to attack a military base in southern Saudi Arabia, as Yemen’s Riyadh-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 UN said on Sunday that nearly 86,000 people had fled Yemen, most of them since early September when the Iran-backed Houthi rebels launched a large-scale offensive that last week resulted in the capture of a key port city and an island on the Bab al-Mandab strait, a crucial shipping alternative to the strait of Hormuz.

The overnight attack at the southern Sharurah base targeted “weapons depots and command and control centres that are managing the aggression against our nation and people”, the Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree wrote on X. The date of the operation was not specified.

The Saudi civil defence force said 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 had sounded in Sharurah governorate but no damage was reported.

Yemeni government forces said they had struck Houthi fighters in the Red Sea city of Mocha and later attacked other Houthi positions in the south-west 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 had seen 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 acknowledged the conversation on Saturday 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 oil exports after Iran largely cut off shipments through the Gulf with its blockade on the strait of Hormuz in response to the US-Israeli assault on the country.

Reuters reported last week that the Houthi advance down Yemen’s Red Sea coast came with direct guidance from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran describes the Houthis as an ally but publicly denies giving them military direction.

Iranian ship struck near Hormuz, state media says

State-run Iranian media said on Sunday that an Iranian commercial vessel had been struck early in the morning off Qeshm Island, with one person killed and four injured.

The state-run IRNA news agency quoted the Qeshm governor as blaming a “terrorist enemy”. There was no immediate comment from 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.

Maritime trackers also received new reports of a separate attack on a ship in the strait on Sunday, adding to concerns about 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 reignited 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, with the fall of Mocha on Thursday driving many residents to Aden.

The UN’s migration agency said on Sunday that more than 2,000 people fleeing Yemen had landed in Djibouti last week.