Yemen’s Houthis said on Monday Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes across the west of the country after the Iran-backed group earlier announced it targeted military bases in the kingdom.
The group, fighting the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government, last week seized control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which has become vital as the wider US-Iran war chokes the Strait of Hormuz.
The Houthis said Riyadh targeted Yemen with 54 strikes over 24 hours, after the group fired dozens of drones and missiles at Saudi military facilities, prompting the Saudi civil defence to issue alerts in the southern cities of Khamis Mushait and Abha.
The civil defence later issued a brief alert for Najran in southwestern Saudi Arabia without elaborating on the cause for the warning.
A Khamis Mushait resident told AFP he heard “intense blasts” which left fires burning for a “long time”.
“Honestly, we couldn’t sleep at all.”
Houthi missile attacks in western Yemen killed eight troops from Yemeni government forces, two military sources with the Aden-based administration told AFP.
The Iran-backed group’s Al-Masirah TV channel said two civilians were killed in Saudi strikes that destroyed a bridge in Taiz province, which has seen some of Yemen’s fiercest clashes in recent days.
The renewed fighting in Yemen comes as the wider regional war remains at a stalemate. But US President Donald Trump on Monday said he was open to holding talks with Iran.
“The failing Nation of Iran wants to make a deal, quickly and badly. I will determine whether or not the U.S.A. will choose to engage — The concept of which we are open to,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.
– Wider regional war –
On Monday, a proposed meeting between Gulf states and Iran over the future of Hormuz was postponed, with Tehran accusing Riyadh of using Yemen as a “pretext” to delay the talks.
Tehran has long supported the Houthis, a member of its anti-Israel “axis of resistance”, including with weapons and technology, but analysts dispute the extent to which Iran is behind the renewed fighting.
“Iran does not interfere in Yemeni affairs,” foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters on Monday, saying the Houthis are “entirely independent actors who make their decisions based on their own interests”.
Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was expected to hold talks with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday, Cairo announced.
Mirette Mabrouk, an expert with the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said Prince Mohammed would seek “assurances that if necessary, Egypt will step up to protect Bab al-Mandab”.
She said Egypt, whose vital Suez Canal route has also been threatened by the Houthi blockade, “will fight if necessary, but that is not the default position”.
“The default position is to exercise every other option before that,” she added.
Last week, US media reported Trump had rejected a personal request from the Saudi crown prince to intervene in the war.
Yemen’s prolonged civil war had been dormant for four years before reigniting in July over an Iranian flight to the capital Sanaa, becoming the latest conflict drawn into the wider regional war.
The Houthis’ military spokesman Yahya Saree on Monday said Saudi Arabia “conducted 54 airstrikes over the past 24 hours using F15 and Typhoon aircraft”.
He said the areas of Taiz, Lahj, Al-Jawf, Marib, and Hodeida were targeted.
– Forced to flee –
Yemeni government forces on Sunday said they had recaptured positions in the southwestern province of Taiz from Houthi fighters and carried out airstrikes, telling the official Saba news agency they killed at least 10 gunmen.
The Saudi crown prince received US Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper in Jeddah on Monday to discuss “the latest developments in the region”, according to Saudi news agency SPA.
The US admiral travelled to Saudi Arabia on Thursday for urgent coordination meetings, according to US news site Axios.
The Houthis seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa in 2014 at the outset of the civil war, driving the government to Aden in the south.
The following year, Saudi Arabia led a coalition to intervene on the side of the government, launching wave after wave of airstrikes as the conflict escalated into one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
On Monday, the UN’s migration agency said the renewed fighting in the Arab world’s poorest country had forced 93,864 people to flee their homes.
AFP
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