Yemen Military Says It Has ‘Secured’ Red Sea Strait 

Yemeni government forces say they have secured the Bab al-Mandab Strait as Saudi backed troops launch a major offensive against Houthis.

Yemeni government forces backed by Saudi Arabia say they have “secured” the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, as they launch a major offensive against the Iran-backed Houthi movement.

The Yemeni military said National Shield, Giants Brigades and Tihama Resistance forces had captured the Red Sea city of Mokha on Monday afternoon with support from Saudi air strikes.

However, conflicting reports from unnamed Yemeni government and military sources said the forces had only reached the outskirts of the city.

Four government sources told Reuters that Yemeni forces reached Mokha’s outskirts late on Monday and that Houthi fighters were retreating.

Government military sources who spoke to AFP did not confirm the capture of Mokha. They said: “our forces took control of the Dhubab military airfield and cut the road linking the Dhubab district to the Bab al-Mandab area”.

Earlier, the Yemeni military said its forces had seized Dhubab airport, about 45km south of Mokha, and were besieging Houthi fighters inside the nearby town.

Houthi-run media denied reports that government forces had made advances in Dhubab.

The government said operations had also begun on other fronts on Monday, including the capital, Sanaa, which the Houthis captured at the start of the civil war 12 years ago.

Meanwhile, 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.

Turkey and Pakistan, allies of Saudi Arabia, held an emergency meeting in Riyadh on Monday and agreed to rapidly deploy military forces in Saudi Arabia under their Mecca defence pact, according to a joint statement shared by Pakistan’s foreign ministry.

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 said Saudi Arabia was committing “dozens of massacres” and that it must “bear all the consequences”.

The Houthi-run Humanitarian Operations Co-ordination Centre warned civilian airlines that Saudi airspace, except for the skies above the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, was no longer safe because it had become “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 to AFP.

On Sunday, the head of Yemen’s internationally recognised Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad al-Alimi, announced the beginning of an offensive dubbed Operation Yemen Dawn.

He said the operation aimed to retake all territory held by the Houthis and insisted that all opportunities for de-escalation had been exhausted.