Explosions echoed across Riyadh as Yemen’s Houthi movement said it had struck the Saudi capital’s main airport, even as it rejected government claims that it is being driven back on the ground amid rapidly escalating fighting.
Yemen’s government forces, after announcing a counter-offensive, said yesterday they had pushed the Houthis out of the Bab al-Mandab area — a strategic Red Sea shipping corridor — and from the port city of Mocha, which was captured last month.
With the front lines shifting quickly and journalists facing severe access constraints, competing battlefield accounts from both sides have been impossible to independently verify.
In a statement posted on Telegram, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree insisted the group still controlled all territory it has recently taken, including key positions along Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
Its fighters “have full control over all their advances on the ground”, he said.
Saree also said the Houthis had launched dozens of strikes over the past few hours against government forces in Yemen’s Al-Jawf and Marib regions, and that attacks also hit Taiz governorate.
Late last night, the Houthis said they had targeted Riyadh airport and an oil refinery belonging to Saudi state energy giant Aramco.
Residents reported loud blasts shaking the Saudi capital yesterday. Saudi Arabia’s civilian aviation authority said at least three people were wounded in separate attacks on Jazan and Najran airports near the Yemen border a day earlier.
Saudi Arabia — the Yemeni government’s principal backer — has been providing air support to the counter-offensive launched by government forces.
As hostilities intensified, the Houthis accused Saudi air power of killing six members of one family.
According to the Houthis’ health ministry, cited by the group’s official press agency, an airstrike on a village in Hajjah governorate bordering Saudi Arabia “caused the deaths of six people from the same family”, including a mother and father and four children aged three to eight.
‘Victories on several fronts’
Yemen’s government forces said last night they had scored “victories on several fronts”. However, military sources aligned with the government stopped short of formally confirming the capture of Mocha, saying instead that forces had severed the area’s only supply route.
They also reported pushing the Houthis out of multiple locations in Taiz in the southwest, where fighting has surged in recent days.
The Yemeni government has set out an objective of retaking all Houthi-held territory — areas that include most of the country’s population and large swathes that have been under Houthi control for more than a decade.
Yemen’s civil war reignited in July after years of relative calm, opening a new front in the broader Middle East conflict that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February.
Last month, the Houthis took control of Yemen’s entire western coastline along the Red Sea during the deadliest fighting the country has seen in years.
Since then, the group has repeatedly targeted oil and military sites in Saudi Arabia and has announced a maritime blockade on Saudi ships.
Pakistan and Turkey have pledged to deploy troops to Saudi Arabia under a mutual defence pact after weeks of Houthi attacks.
The conflict has deepened Yemen’s humanitarian emergency. Since the latest round of fighting began, more than 184,000 people have been forced from their homes, according to the United Nations.
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.
