The chairman of Yemenâs Presidential Leadership Council says the âDawn of Yemenâ military operation has begun to ârestore state institutions and liberate the capital Sanaa and end the Houthi militia coupâ.
âWith Godâs help, the will of our people, the bravery of our armed forces and all military formations, and the support of our brothers and friends, Yemen will move towards a new dawn of freedom, peace, and stability,â Rashad al-Alimi said on X.
The army of Yemenâs internationally recognised government says it has âsucceeded in controllingâ the Bab al-Mandeb strait and recaptured a nearby airport in the coastal town of Dhubab in the governorate of Taiz.
In a series of posts on X, Brigadier-General Majid al-Nuzaili said government forces took over the airport and tightened control in the area.
â The â Saudi Arabia-backed head of â Yemenâs Presidential Leadership Council, â Rashad al-Alimi, has announced the start of military operations to retake the â remaining territory held by â the Iran-backed Houthi armed group â and restore â state â authority across the country.
In a televised address, al-Alimi said on Sunday the internationally recognised governmentâs forces would extend âthe authority of the state and its institutions over the entire national territoryâ.
Loud explosions have been reported in Yemenâs Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, while missile, drone and artillery attacks targeted Houthi positions across the country, according to the military.
Colonel Majed Abdullah al-Nazili, Yemenâs military spokesman, wrote on X on Saturday that the armed forces are carrying out a military operation âon legitimate vital military targets in Sanaaâ, adding that they are âcapable of executing strategic attacks against the Houthisâ.
More than 100,000 Yemeni troops could â be mobilized in the offensive, depending on the scale, the officials all said.
Spokespeople for the Saudi and Yemeni governments, the Houthi group and the US military didn‘t immediately respond to requests for comment about the Saudi plans.
The US sent one additional Patriot battery to Saudi Arabia to protect a key oil facility and another to Qatar to protect a natural gas facility, Axios reported Thursday.
The deployments are notable because Patriot batteries are in high demand worldwide, and the US has a limited supply. The US has just 33 batteries stationed at home and 27 batteries stationed overseas, according to the nonprofit Missile Defence Alliance.
Pakistan sent four cargo planes of armaments to the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government of Yemen in September as the kingdom mobilises to try to push back a sweeping Houthi offensive.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, the pact‘s three members, will decide ânext steps at the meeting, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told a news âconference. He said the date would be confirmed later.
Turkeyâs Chief of General Staff Selcuk Bayraktaroglu (R), Marshal Syed Asim Munir (L), Commander of the Pakistan Defence Forces and the Army, and General Fayyadh Bin Hamed Al-Ruwaili (C), Chief of the General Staff of Saudi Arabia, posing during a meeting in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia
There is another crucial consideration: the Houthis have so far avoided attacking American ships under an understanding reached with Washington.
Trump told Fox News on Sunday that the United States remained in communication with the group and said the Houthis had agreed not to fight the US.
A senior Houthi official separately told AP that the group did not intend to target American vessels. Oman-mediated discussions have also reaffirmed the 2025 US-Houthi ceasefire arrangement.
Trump initially resisted launching airstrikes during meetings with advisers Wednesday but later ordered the Pentagon to prepare for military action following a phone call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday, the report said.
The Saudi crown prince urged Trump to intervene directly amid rapid territorial gains by the Houthis in Yemen, according to the newspaper.
Saudi Arabia on Saturday confirmed that Yemenâs Houthi rebels tried to attack its capital with a ballistic missile, the first targeting of Riyadh since the escalation in fighting with the Tehran-backed rebels that has opened a new front in the Iran war.
The statement by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis came long after the dawn attempt, which the coalition said was intercepted. Some residents in Riyadh heard an explosion. Later, some saw a plume of smoke near the airport. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
In der internationalen Berichterstattung wird das Ergebnis ĂŒberwiegend als militĂ€rischer Erfolg AnsarAllahs dargestellt. Ein genauerer Blick auf die von CNN rekonstruierten AblĂ€ufe zeigt jedoch ein anderes Bild: weniger einen Sieg der einen Seite als einen aussergewöhnlichen Zusammenbruch der anderen â mit direkter saudischer und US-amerikanischer Beteiligung an diesem Zusammenbruch.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says Tehran is ânot at war with Saudi Arabiaâ, as tensions rise over Houthi attacks on the kingdom, Al Jazeera reported.
Pezeshkian said the Houthis have âtheir own issuesâ, distancing Iran from the groupâs actions.
A 2022 truce had reduced large-scale combat and allowed Saudi Arabia to distance itself from the conflict, but it left the capital under Houthi control and did nothing to establish centralized control over the country and its heavy weapons.
Now, as the Houthis advance rapidly toward government strongholds in the south, Yemenâs military is scrambling to regroup and make progress on its planned offensive in the north. The question now is whether Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and other powers will now intervene to help blunt the Houthisâ rapid advances.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Kingdom strongly condemned the targeting of the vessel by Iran and expressed its rejection of Iranian attacks against Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait.
âThe Kingdom also condemns the Iranian attacks targeting Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait, and affirms its full support and solidarity with the brotherly countries in the measures they take to protect their security and sovereignty from any threat,â the ministry said in a statement.
Two Filipino sailors were killed in an attack on an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, Saudi Arabia‘s national shipping company Bahri said on Wednesday.
„Bahri confirms that its vessel SIDR was involved in a security incident while transiting the Strait of Hormuz“ on the evening of 31 August, the carrier said on X, confirming „the loss of its two Filipino seafarers as a result“ of the attack.
(Updated 6 hours ago)
Two supertankers carrying Saudi âoil were struck by unknown projectiles within minutes of each other while âtransiting outbound through the Strait of Hormuz late on Monday, according to shipping intelligence and tracking firms Marisks and Kpler.
„The near-simultaneous incidents represent a further escalation in the threat environment within âthe Omani corridor,“ Marisks said.
Israel bombed âan airbase in Syria on Tuesday, Syrian state media said, carrying out what appeared to be its first strike on Syrian government assets since March and drawing condemnation âfrom Turkey and criticism from a U.S. envoy who called it an „unnecessary escalation“.
ISLAMABAD â Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said the Makkah defence agreement is not aimed at aggression, but seeks to promote peace, security and prosperity in the region among the three countries.
Briefing the federal cabinet, the prime minister said the Makkah agreement was an extension of the defence cooperation between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, noting that the two countries had also signed a defence pact last year.
Strikes by Yemen‘s Houthis on Sunday killed at least 11 people, a medical source in the Yemeni port city of Mokha has told AFP, after an earlier drone salvo targeted a Saudi oil refinery on the Red Sea coast.
A years-long truce in Yemen‘s civil war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed internationally recognised government appeared to collapse last month.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed Saudi Arabia‘s strongest condemnation of the targeting of a UAE tanker transiting the Strait of Hormuz. âThese unacceptable attacks constitute an assault on the security and safety of maritime navigation and global energy supplies,â the ministry said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
Saudi Arabia affirmed that Iran‘s continued perpetration of these attacks is a grave violation of international laws and norms, including Security Council Resolution 2817, which guarantees freedom of navigation and safe passage in international waterways.
âThe agreement is intended to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggressionâ and stipulates that an armed attack against any of the three countries âwould be regarded as an attack on allâ, according to a joint statement cited by Reuters.
The pact brings together NATO member Turkiye, which has the allianceâs second-largest military, nuclear-armed Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, one of the Gulfâs most powerful states and the worldâs leading oil exporters.