The port city of Aden, Yemen. Photo: T3n60 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Yemen's Houthis said on Saturday they attacked the southern port city of Aden, the interim seat of Saudi Arabia's backed Yemeni government, after accusing Riyadh of killing 16 people in airstrikes on the capital Sanaa and the Red Sea port city of Hodeida. The claim marks a sharp new escalation in a war that had been dormant for years and has now become a central front in the wider Middle East conflict.
The Saudi-led coalition said earlier on Saturday it had intercepted two missiles targeting the Saudi cities of Taif and Yanbu in the kingdom's west. Explosions were then heard in Aden, home to the government that Riyadh supports in Yemen's long-running civil war. The Houthis quickly claimed responsibility for the Aden attack.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group's forces targeted what he called Saudi enemy concentrations at the Al-Nasr camp and the naval base in Aden. The Yemeni government's account differed: its interior ministry said the attack hit the coast guards' headquarters and a second coast guard building, according to the Saba news agency, and did not mention the base near the airport. No casualty figure for the Aden attack itself was reported in the accounts available on Saturday, and the competing descriptions of what was hit could not be independently reconciled.
The reported death toll of 16 comes from the Houthis' own Al-Masirah outlet, not from an independent count. According to those reports, a strike on a house in Sanaa killed at least four people and wounded several others, a strike on a residential building for cement factory workers in Sanaa governorate killed six women and one child and wounded three others, and a strike on a family home in Hodeida killed a father, two of his children and his two wives. Saudi authorities were not reported to have confirmed those figures.
Saturday's exchange did not come out of nowhere. Yemen's civil war, pitting the Iran-backed Houthis against the Saudi-supported and internationally recognised government, had been largely dormant since a ceasefire in 2022. It erupted again in July as the wider Middle East war, which began with United States and Israeli strikes on Iran in February, spread across the region.
In recent weeks the Houthis have repeatedly attacked Saudi Arabia, targeting oil infrastructure and airports. An attack on Riyadh airport earlier this month killed 13 people and wounded dozens more. This week the United States ordered non-essential embassy staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, citing the Houthi threat. On Saturday, the United States mission to the United Arab Emirates and the United States embassy in Riyadh said Washington's travel advisories for both Gulf countries had been updated to reflect an increase in potential armed attacks by the Iranian-supported Houthis.
Saudi Arabia's civil defence agency also broadcast warnings of potential danger for four western regions on Saturday, including Taif and Yanbu as well as the holy city of Makkah. The alerts were rescinded minutes later, and residents were instructed to proceed to the nearest safe place. Yanbu matters far beyond its size: it is a major oil export hub on the Red Sea coast that has allowed Riyadh to bypass Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz for much of its crude exports.
The wider fallout is already visible. The dramatic escalation in Yemen, with the Houthis taking control of the entire Red Sea coast in a lightning offensive last month, has further destabilised the region and disrupted oil markets. Egypt has suggested sending troops to help defend Saudi Arabia, while Britain and France have offered their forces to protect the Gulf kingdom. Riyadh leads the military coalition that first intervened in Yemen in 2015, after the Houthis seized Sanaa and much of northern Yemen in late 2014, in support of the internationally recognised government.
Aden itself has served as that government's temporary base since the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014. An attack on its naval base, military camp or coast guard headquarters, whichever account proves accurate, therefore strikes at the heart of the government's seat of power, not at a remote front line. It also shows how far the conflict has widened: from a Yemeni civil war, to strikes on Saudi cities and infrastructure, to a regional confrontation drawing in the United States, Egypt, Britain and France.
What happens next will depend on whether Saturday's exchange was a single retaliatory round or the start of a sustained campaign against Aden and Saudi targets. For now, the confirmed facts are narrow but serious: missiles aimed at Saudi cities were intercepted, explosions were heard in Aden, the Houthis claimed the attack, and the Yemeni government confirmed an attack on coast guard sites. The deadliest claims of the day, the 16 reported killed in Sanaa and Hodeida, remain attributed to the Houthi outlet that reported them.
Sources: AFP reporting via The Hindu and The Korea Times; Aaj English TV.