Renewed hostilities reported between Houthi forces and Saudi Arabia

ADEN, Yemen (AP) — The conflict in Yemen intensified on Sunday, as government forces launched attacks against Iran-backed Houthi rebels along the Red Sea and Houthis fired into neighboring Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemen’s government.

The Yemeni government vowed to send more forces to the Red Sea coast and one official conceded a “painful” defeat last week when Houthis captured the port city of Mokha and an island on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

The Houthis’ biggest territorial gains in years, along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, could boost Iran’s strategy of driving up world oil and gas prices to pressure the United States.

The escalation — especially Houthi attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure and its shipping in the Red Sea — adds pressure on global oil supplies and prices, and that could give Iran leverage in its war with the United States.

As Yemen risks descending into another civil war, the United Nations estimated that more than 80,000 people in the impoverished country have been displaced by the fighting since the start of September.

One woman said a mortar shell fell nearby as she fled in the middle of the night from the town of Khawkha in Hodeida province along the Red Sea, shortly before it was captured by Houthis.

“I saw with my own eyes cars and buses burning, and bodies of children and women were lying on the road in a horrific scene,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for her and her family’s safety.

Saudi authorities sounded sirens Sunday afternoon in the southern city of Abha and Khamis Mushait province, warning residents to take shelter from potential incoming fire. Both areas were repeatedly attacked by the Houthi in recent weeks.

The Houthis claimed to have used drones and missiles to target Saudi Arabia, including a military base just over the border with Yemen. Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree didn’t provide evidence or say when the attack occurred.

The Saudi civil defense overnight said a projectile fell in a different area 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.

Saudi Arabia did not announce any new attacks targeting the Houthis.

The Houthis are targeting Saudi oil infrastructure and shipping as part of a recently declared blockade, but they have said they do not intend to threaten other countries’ commercial shipping.

The National Resistance, a government-allied force that had controlled coastal areas, said more than 500 government fighters were killed on the west coast over the past four weeks — its first comprehensive toll.

It also said more than 1,000 Houthis had been killed in Hodeida and Taiz provinces. A spokesman for the Houthis didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Yemen is home to over 40 million people who fear a return to the civil war that began more than a decade ago and killed 150,000, bringing many others to the brink of famine. Yemen’s internationally recognized government and Saudi Arabia have been battling the Houthis for 12 years. A ceasefire that began in 2022 had mostly halted the fighting.

A senior government official in Yemen said its forces will return to the Red Sea coast and fight back. People fleeing the Houthi advance told The Associated Press they saw forces withdrawing and urging people to run.

Sultan al-Arada, a member of the ruling presidential leadership council, described the collapse of government forces in the port city of Mokha and elsewhere on Yemen’s west coast as “painful and regrettable.” He said in the televised interview aired late Saturday that forces “are currently regrouping and will return to the battle.”

On Sunday, Rashad al-Alimi, who leads the presidential council, sought to downplay the defeats as “incidental,” according to comments published by the country’s state-run SABA news agency. The government, he said, “will remain clear and fixed on the goal of retrieving (state) institutions and of reclaiming sovereignty over all national territories.”

On Sunday, the Yemeni military said it launched airstrikes on Houthi positions in Mokha, the coastal town of Dhubab and elsewhere in Taiz province. The rebels reported strikes by the Saudi-backed forces in Taiz province and artillery shelling in Saada province, a Houthi stronghold on Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis’ advance puts them just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the U.S. military base in Djibouti, on the other side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. It’s the main U.S. base in Africa and one of several foreign military bases in Djibouti, including those of China, France and Japan.

The small Horn of Africa nation is already seeing the arrival of displaced Yemenis making the perilous water crossing. More than 2,000 Yemenis have reached Djibouti, the International Organization for Migration said Sunday.

Djibouti’s Economy and Finance Minister Ilyas M. Dawaleh, said on X that the country’s navy, coast guard and other specialized agencies were conducting rescue operations and providing emergency assistance.

The U.N. migration agency said Sunday that more than 82,000 people in Yemen have been displaced since the beginning of September.

“The displaced people are in a very bad condition,” said Ahmad al-Masawi, the director of the Al Salam camp in the southern port city of Aden, who appealed to international organizations for assistance. “They left their homes quickly without any clothing or anything. They are crammed in camps, houses and even on roads.”

Hussein Haydara sat outside a shelter at the camp in a white undershirt, as his children waited to be assigned to a tent. He worried about how far the shelter is from schools, hospitals and markets, and wondered how they will survive the next weeks or months.

Haydara had fled his home in Hodeida once before, when the Houthis took it over in 2015. But this time feels more precarious.

“With the first displacement, we had time to plan things but this time we were forced to escape all of a sudden. One could hardly take their children and the lightest stuff possible,” he said.

Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Omar Farouk in Mogadishu, Somalia, and Noha ElHennawy in Cairo, contributed to this report.