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Yemen’s Houthis said on Saturday they attacked the southern city of Aden, the interim seat of the Saudi-backed 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 further widening of the Iran-backed group’s campaign against Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s internationally recognised government. The campaign has shifted the focus of the wider Middle East war that erupted with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February.
The Saudi-led coalition said earlier on Saturday it had intercepted two missiles aimed at the Saudi cities of Taif and Yanbu in the kingdom’s west.
Explosions were then heard in Aden, home to the government Riyadh supports in Yemen’s years-long civil war.
The city has served as the government’s temporary base since the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014.
The Houthis quickly claimed responsibility. Military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group’s forces targeted “Saudi enemy concentrations at the so-called Al-Nasr camp and the naval base in Aden.”
The Yemeni government gave a different account.
Its interior ministry said the attack hit the coast guards’ headquarters and a second coast guard building at another location, according to the Saba news agency. It made no mention of the base near the airport.
The Houthis’ Al-Masirah outlet reported a series of “Saudi enemy airstrikes” on Sanaa, including one on a house that killed at least four people and wounded several others.
A separate strike on a residential building for cement factory workers in Sanaa governorate killed six women and one child and wounded three others, the broadcaster said.
Al-Masirah later reported that a strike on a home in Hodeida, in the west, killed five people: the head of the family, two of his children and his two wives.
It blamed Saudi Arabia for that attack as well. The reports come from the Houthi-run outlet and were not independently confirmed in the information available.
Saudi Arabia’s civil defence agency broadcast warnings of “potential danger” for four western regions, including Taif, Yanbu and Mecca, home to Islam’s holiest city. The alerts were rescinded minutes later.
Residents had been told to “proceed to the nearest safe place,” and the agency repeated a legal warning against sharing images or information related to “countering missiles and drones.”
The kingdom has come under repeated attack from the Houthis in recent weeks. The group has targeted Saudi oil infrastructure as well as airports.
Yanbu is a major oil export hub on the Red Sea coast, and it has allowed Riyadh to bypass Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz for much of its crude exports. An attack on Riyadh airport earlier this month killed 13 people and wounded dozens more.
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Yemen’s civil war, which pits the Houthis against the Saudi-supported government, had been dormant since a ceasefire in 2022.
It erupted again in July as the wider regional war took hold. A Saudi-led coalition first intervened in the conflict in 2015, and the fighting has devastated Yemen and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The escalation has further destabilised the region and disrupted oil markets, particularly after the Houthis took control of the entire Red Sea coast in a lightning offensive last month.
Egypt has suggested sending troops to help defend Saudi Arabia, while Britain and France have offered their forces to protect the kingdom.
The United States ordered non-essential embassy staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia this week, citing the Houthi threat.
On Saturday, the US Mission to the United Arab Emirates and the US embassy in Riyadh said Washington’s travel advisories for both Gulf countries were “updated to reflect an increase in potential armed attacks by the Iranian-supported Houthis.”
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