Houthis Pummel Southwest Saudi Arabia With Ballistic Missiles, As Yemen Air & Ground War Erupts
The heaviest fighting since the Iran war began is taking place in Yemen currently, also involving significant overnight attacks on Saudi energy and military sites by the Houthis.
The Houthis have since unveiled new operations, in a Tuesday statement saying the Iran-aligned group is targeting critical Saudi oil and military infrastructure. Widely circulating local videos suggest the attacks on multiple sites were in some case simultaneous and overwhelming.
"In response to this brutal aggression and in confronting comprehensive escalation with comprehensive escalation, the YAF carried out a large-scale … operation, targeting Aramco facilities in Abha and Najran, the Economic City, Aramco in Jizan, and Khamis Mushait Air Base, using dozens of ballistic missiles and drones," said the Houthi statement.
"The strikes, by God's grace, were accurate and direct and caused significant damage to those facilities," it added.
The kingdom's Energy Ministry has indeed acknowledged fires and operations stoppages at several sites as a result, as well as damage and injured personnel.
"Several energy sector facilities and installations in the southern region of the kingdom were targeted this morning," the energy ministry stated.
"The attacks caused fires at several locations, leading to a temporary halt in some operations. Specialized field teams have begun containing the fires, securing the sites, and assessing the damage," the statement said. Aramco sites have been targeted on multiple occasions this summer, resulting in operations halts, particularly at key sites near the Yemeni border. Damage is still being assessed at the Aramco Jisan oil facilities, which were targeted yet again.
Also military and supply missions were hit, with the Houthi statement also indicating the destruction of Saudi military equipment and convoys of Saudi-backed forces of the internationally-recognized government.
For anyone putting a lot of faith in those pipelines that bypass Hormuz...
"Arms trucks coming from Saudi Arabia were targeted and caught fire at the Al-Wadiah military camp," the Houthis stated.
In response later on Tuesday, Saudi airstrikes have reportedly resumed on Yemen in the governorates of Al-Jawf, Al-Bayda, Ma'rib, Taiz, and Al-Hudaydah. Already the death toll is mounting from these renewed strikes:
Houthi rebels in Yemen accused Saudi Arabia of striking a prison on Monday in the country’s north, killing seven, including a child, as tensions escalate between the Iran-backed group and Saudi-backed Yemeni forces.
The strike on the Central Corrective Facility in the strategic city of Hazm in Jawf province also wounded at least seven people, including a woman, said Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry.
The prison’s warden told the Houthi al-Masirah news channel 35 prisoners and a woman who was visiting her husband were trapped under the rubble.
The Saudi side has meanwhile said that dozens were injured in the Houthi attacks. Major General Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led Coalition Forces, blasted the new Houthi aggression as "dangerous" and "senseless" - and announced that at lest 73 people have been wounded, including women and children.
Both sides are now vowing escalation:
Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree accused Saudi Arabia of launching airstrikes and “committing massacres” in Jawf, as well as deploying a reconnaissance drone and supplying mercenaries with various weaponry.
“The ongoing Saudi aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered or unpunished,” he said.
The aerial war is additionally heating up: "Saree said later Monday that Houthi forces downed a total of four reconnaissance drones belonging to Saudi Arabia over the past 24 hours, including one that was spotted Monday morning in Bayda province," as cited in The Associated Press.
Oil prices on world markets continue to steadily inch higher, rising more than 1% as a result of Tuesday's Saudi-Yemen escalation.
The Saudi coalition says it aims to liberate the country's capital of Sanaa from the Iran-backed rebels. "The decision has been made to retake Sana’a. There are surprises we will not reveal now," the Deputy Defense Minister Major General Samir Al-Sabri told state-run Yemen TV.
The Yemeni army further released a statement saying that "From today, we declare that our goal is clear and unequivocal: to liberate Yemen from the grip of the terrorist Houthi militias and restore Sana’a as a capital for all Yemenis."
This appears a return to the kind of bull-blown war in Yemen which marked the latter half of the last decade. But this time it's more complicated and dangerous in terms of regional spillover, given it comes in the context of the Iran conflict, the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and Houthi efforts to close Red Sea shipping to the Saudis, Israelis, and their allies.
Below are more developments via Al Jazeera:
- Saudi Arabia has carried out new attacks in Yemen against al-Jubah district in Marib, in the Houthi-controlled part of the country, according to a news report in Houthi-run media.
- Forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognised government have launched a counteroffensive against the Houthi rebels, with officials saying they aim to recapture the capital Sanaa from the Iran-backed group.
- The Houthis say they repelled an offensive in al-Jawf, and at least seven people were killed in an air strike on a prison in the town of al-Hazm, pledging that the “aggression will not go unpunished”.
- Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has described Yemen’s Houthi rebels as “selfish” for putting their own interests above the welfare of the country’s people. “The Houthis choose to prioritise their narrow interests over the interests of Yemen and resort to violence,” he said at a news conference in the Russian capital.
- Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, in Moscow that Russia is ready to help resolve the spiralling situation in the Middle East.
Saudi-led forces in Yemen bombed Al-Jawf Central Prison:
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