Yemen fighting escalates as Houthis and Saudi forces trade strikes, regional tensions mount

The violence in Yemen has entered a new phase of intensity. On Wednesday, the internationally recognized government reported that Houthi artillery fire had killed three children, including an infant, in the central Marib governorate, with six others wounded. It was the second such attack in as many days—the first had claimed two more children and left fifteen injured. The Houthis, meanwhile, said that a Saudi-led coalition strike on a prison in the northern al-Jawf governorate had killed at least thirty-two people, with seven more wounded. By Thursday morning, air raid sirens were sounding across multiple Saudi provinces as the cycle of claim and counterclaim accelerated.

The immediate trigger for this escalation traces back to late August. According to the World Health Organization, clashes since August 24 have killed or wounded more than one thousand people and displaced tens of thousands from their homes. The broader conflict has its roots deeper still. Yemen has been at war since 2014, when the Houthis took control of the capital, Sanaa, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention the following year. That war killed an estimated one hundred fifty thousand people before a United Nations-brokered truce in 2022 brought a temporary halt to large-scale fighting. The ceasefire held until July, when a strike on Sanaa airport reignited hostilities. Last week, the Houthis launched a major offensive in Hodeidah and Taiz provinces, pushing toward the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a waterway critical to Saudi oil exports. The government-aligned forces responded with counterattacks and expanded operations, including in al-Jawf, which sits as a gateway to Sanaa.

The fighting has crossed into Saudi territory. Major General Turki al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said the Houthis were persisting in attacks on Saudi infrastructure, targeting the cities of Khamis Mushait, Abha, and Jazan with ballistic missiles and drones. Saudi civil defence authorities issued multiple alerts for Khamis Mushait and Abha on Thursday morning, following similar warnings the day before. No casualties were reported from those alerts. On Wednesday, Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, claimed that Saudi forces had launched fifty-four air strikes across six provinces—al-Jawf, Marib, Taiz, Hodeidah, Saada, and al-Bayda—over a twelve-hour period, with aircraft operating from King Khalid Air Base in Khamis Mushait and King Fahd Air Base in Taif. Saree promised retaliation. "These air strikes and the ongoing aggression against our country will not go unanswered and unpunished, by the will and power of God," he said on social media.

The scale of the air campaign is difficult to verify independently. Saree had claimed on Tuesday that Saudi forces had carried out one hundred twenty-one air strikes in preceding days, including the strike on the al-Hazm prison. The Houthis said they responded with attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities in Abha, Najran, and Jizan, as well as on the Economic City and Khamis Mushait Air Base. Saudi officials reported that Houthi attacks had wounded at least seventy-three people on Tuesday alone.

What distinguishes this moment is the involvement of regional powers beyond the immediate combatants. Pakistan warned this week that the recently signed Mecca Joint Defence Agreement—a mutual security pact involving Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, signed last month—could be activated if Houthi attacks continued to spill into Saudi territory. Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told local media that any unprovoked aggression or spillover from Yemen would trigger the agreement's provisions. Iran, which the coalition accuses of backing the Houthis, rejected criticism from the Arab League this week, insisting through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs that it "completely rejects the claims regarding Iran's interference in the affairs of Yemen" and that the Houthis act independently.

On the ground in Yemen, government-aligned forces claimed to have advanced for a third consecutive day in al-Jawf, reaching the vicinity of Bir al-Maraziq and severing Houthi supply lines in the area. They also reported attacks on Houthi positions in Taiz and said reinforcements had been sent to bolster anti-Houthi forces along Yemen's western coast. These claims could not be independently verified. What is clear is that the fighting shows no sign of abating, and the entry of regional defense agreements into the calculus means that a conflict already devastating to Yemen's civilian population now carries the risk of drawing in actors with far greater military capacity.