Yemeni Government Forces Claim Control of Bab al-Mandab Strait as Major Offensive Against Houthis Begins

Yemen's internationally recognised government has announced that its forces, supported by Saudi Arabia, have "secured" the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, marking the opening phase of a large-scale military campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi control across the country.

The Yemeni military stated on Monday that three pro-government formations — National Shield, Giants Brigades and Tihama Resistance — had captured the Red Sea port city of Mokha with the assistance of Saudi air strikes. Mokha sits strategically on the south-western coast, overlooking the narrow maritime chokepoint through which a substantial share of global commercial shipping and energy supplies passes.

However, the claim of Mokha's capture was immediately contested. Unnamed Yemeni government and military sources told the news agencies Reuters and AFP that pro-government forces had only reached the city's outskirts by late Monday, with Houthi fighters reportedly withdrawing from the area. Government military sources speaking to AFP declined to confirm the city had fallen, but said pro-government units had seized the Dhubab military airfield and severed the road connecting the Dhubab district to the Bab al-Mandab area.

Earlier in the day, the Yemeni military had announced the capture of Dhubab airport, located roughly 45 kilometres (27 miles) south of Mokha, and said its forces were laying siege to Houthi fighters holed up in the nearby town. Houthi-run media outlets rejected those claims, denying that government forces had made any advances in Dhubab.

The conflicting accounts underscore the difficulty of verifying battlefield developments in a conflict that has fragmented the country along multiple front lines. The Houthis, for their part, did not comment on the situation in Mokha, but their military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said in a statement posted on Telegram that the group had launched ballistic missiles and drones at oil facilities belonging to Saudi Aramco in Riyadh and the Khurais area.

According to Saree, the Houthis also struck Riyadh's international airport, an Aramco oil refinery and Abha airport, among other locations. The group described the attacks as retaliation for what it called dozens of Saudi strikes on Houthi-held territory. Saudi Arabia condemned the attacks and renewed its calls for the permanent members of the UN Security Council to throw their support behind Yemen's government.

BBC Verify reported that satellite imagery captured on Saturday showed thick, dark smoke rising from the site of a strike at the Aramco Riyadh Refinery in the city's south-east. A similar plume was visible at the Khurais Central Processing Facility, as well as at a potential strike point in imagery from Sunday, suggesting the Houthi claims of significant damage may have some basis.

The offensive, dubbed Operation Yemen Dawn, was announced on Sunday by Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen's internationally recognised Presidential Leadership Council. Al-Alimi declared that all avenues for de-escalation had been exhausted and urged all forces to carry out their assigned missions "until the country is liberated from the grip of the Houthi terrorist militia". The government said operations had also commenced on other fronts on Monday, including around the capital Sanaa, which the Houthis seized at the outset of the civil war twelve years ago.

The announcement came after the Houthis reportedly cut a mountain road near the south-western city of Taiz, effectively surrounding government forces and residents there. The move appeared to be part of a broader Houthi effort to consolidate territorial gains made during a surprise offensive last month along Yemen's south-western Red Sea coast, when the group quickly expelled pro-government forces from positions overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, including Mokha, Dhubab and Perim Island.

A Saudi-led military coalition said its fighter jets were providing "round-the-clock" air support to pro-government forces and had destroyed 324 "high-value" targets since the offensive began. The scale of the air campaign signals Riyadh's determination to prevent the Houthis from entrenching themselves further along a waterway of critical importance to international trade and to Saudi Arabia's own oil export infrastructure.

In a significant escalation, Turkey and Pakistan — both allies of Saudi Arabia — convened an emergency meeting in Riyadh on Monday and agreed to rapidly deploy military forces to the kingdom, invoking their Mecca defence pact. The joint statement, shared by Pakistan's foreign ministry, suggests the conflict could draw in a wider set of regional actors, raising the prospect of a more protracted and destabilising confrontation.

Civilians continue to bear the heaviest burden. Saudi air strikes killed a schoolgirl and a woman in the Sanhan and Saawan districts of Sanaa on Monday, according to Houthi-run Al Masirah TV. Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam accused Saudi Arabia of committing "dozens of massacres" and warned that the kingdom must "bear all the consequences". The Houthi-run Humanitarian Operations Co-ordination Centre also cautioned civilian airlines that Saudi airspace — with the exception of the skies above the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina — was no longer safe, describing it as a "theatre of operations".

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned "the continued Houthi cross-border attacks" on Saudi Arabia and said he was "deeply concerned by the sharp escalation in fighting", according to a statement provided to AFP. The remarks reflect mounting international anxiety that the renewed hostilities could unravel what had been a four-year informal ceasefire and plunge Yemen back into full-scale war.

That truce began to collapse in July, when the Houthis announced a "maritime embargo" against Saudi Arabia and launched missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea. The group said it was retaliating for a Saudi blockade of ports and airports in Houthi-held territory, as well as an air strike on Sanaa airport that it blamed on the kingdom. Yemen's civil war began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government from Sanaa, and escalated a year later when a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened in an attempt to restore the government's rule.