Houthi fighters on Sunday said they used drones and missiles to attack a military base in southern Saudi Arabia as renewed fighting with Yemen’s government forces led growing numbers of civilians to flee.
The attack at the southern Sharurah base targeted “weapons depots and command and control centres that are managing the aggression against our nation and people”, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree wrote on X.
The date of the operation was not specified. Clashes have increased this week between the Iran-allied Houthis and Yemeni government forces, which are backed by Riyadh.
On Saturday, the government forces said they had struck Houthi fighters in the Red Sea city of Mocha, and later attacked other Houthi positions in the south-western part of the country.
“Air Force of the Armed Forces targeted positions and barracks of the terrorist Houthi group with three airstrikes” in the Taiz region, the Yemeni military said Sunday in a post on X.
The US news site Axios also reported that Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman twice called Donald Trump to request strikes on the Houthis last week, but that the request was rejected.
The ongoing clashes follow a week-long Houthi offensive that culminated in the group capturing the remainder of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and several strategic islands, cementing their hold on the Bab al-Mandab strait at the sea’s southern entrance.
The waterway has become an important artery for Saudi Arabian oil exports after Iran largely cut off shipments through the Gulf with its blockade on the strait of Hormuz at the start of the Middle East war.
The Houthi attacks in Saudi come as maritime trackers received new reports of an attack on a ship in the strait of Hormuz on Sunday, adding to concerns about Iran-related threats to energy supplies after Saudi Arabia shut down a vital oil pipeline.
The British navy-affiliated agency UKMTO said it had a report of a projectile hitting a vessel as it moved through the strait. The amount of damage and the status of the crew were unknown as of early Sunday, the agency said.
The Houthis have recently declared their own maritime blockade of Riyadh’s Red Sea ports.
The government news agency Saba reported on Saturday that Yemeni “forces destroyed vehicles and weapons and killed members of the Houthi terrorist militia” near the port of Mocha, and quoted a spokesperson for the forces as saying they had also struck Houthi targets just outside the city.
The Houthis, meanwhile, said on Saturday evening that over the past ۴۸ hours, “Saudi enemy aircraft conducted ۱۲۹ airstrikes” on areas under their control.
Yemen’s civil war, which began in ۲۰۱۴ with the Houthi capture of the capital Sana’a, had been dormant since a ceasefire in ۲۰۲۲ but roared back to life in July.
Saudi Arabia first entered the war on the side of Yemen’s internationally recognised government in ۲۰۱۵ and continues to support the Aden-based administration.
On Saturday night, Saudi authorities said a Houthi projectile fell in an area near the border, hours after issuing alerts warning of the risk of possible attacks. The civil defence directorate said the incident resulted “in two injuries and material damage to a mosque, several buildings, and vehicles”.
The Yemeni civil war has uprooted millions of people, and the latest fighting has led even more to flee their homes.
The fall of Mocha to the Houthis on Thursday drove many residents to Aden, where the internationally recognised Yemeni government is based.
The UN’s migration agency said on Saturday that ۷۶,۰۰۰ people had fled the fighting since July, a figure that had quadrupled since last week.
About ۱,۴۰۰ people had fled to Djibouti, the country’s minister of economy and finance Ilyas Moussa Dawaleh said on Saturday.
The renewed fighting in Yemen has killed more than ۵۰۰ people, according to sources on both sides.
Trump on Saturday acknowledged speaking to the de facto Saudi leader but said the Houthis had also “called us and they don’t want to fight with us”. He did not elaborate on whether Washington would take any action, but told reporters that “everything’s gonna work out fine and dandy” in the region.
In ۲۰۲۵, the US conducted a seven-week bombing campaign against the Houthis in response to their repeated attacks on Red Sea shipping in support of Hamas in the Gaza war.
That ended with a negotiated ceasefire, though the Houthis kept up their missile and drone attacks targeting Israel.
More recently, the group has resumed attacks on ships in the Red Sea after declaring their maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia.
In Yemen’s capital Sana’a, Houthi supporters celebrated the freeing of ۲۱۰ prisoners held in areas that fell to the group and had spent up to eight years in jail.
