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A Saudi-led coalition said late Wednesday it had destroyed 82 Houthi military targets across four Yemeni provinces, in an operation it said was launched in response to Houthi attacks on two Saudi airports that killed three people and wounded dozens more.
Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said the strikes hit Houthi positions in Saada, Hodeidah, Al-Jawf and Marib provinces.
Among the targets were 11 ballistic missile storage facilities located in mountainous areas of Saada, as well as command and control centers, communications systems, missile and weapons depots, and Houthi headquarters.
Al-Maliki said the coalition's operation came in direct response to Houthi attacks on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and Abha International Airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia.
He warned that attacks on civilians and civilian facilities "will not go unpunished."
Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said earlier Wednesday that three people were killed and 36 others injured in the attacks on the Abha and King Khalid airports, which took place Tuesday and Wednesday.
There was no immediate comment from the Houthis on the coalition's claims.
The coalition also reported intercepting Houthi ballistic missiles on two consecutive days.
On Wednesday, it said it had intercepted and destroyed a missile launched toward an area north of Riyadh. A day earlier, the coalition said it intercepted and destroyed another missile fired toward Khamis Mushait in southern Saudi Arabia.
The coalition's operation comes amid a broader escalation in Yemen that began in July, following a period of relative calm that had held since a United Nations-brokered truce took effect in April 2022.
Fighting intensified further in September, when Houthi forces seized strategic positions in the Al-Hudaydah and Taiz provinces, including the port city of Mokha, before advancing to Mayyun Island in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a narrow waterway linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
Yemen has been engulfed in conflict since the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and several other provinces in September 2014, a takeover that prompted a Saudi-led coalition to intervene militarily in March 2015 in support of Yemen's internationally recognized government.
The war has since drawn in regional and international powers and created one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises.
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