Yemen presidency announces military offensive to retake all Houthi territory

ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) — Yemen’s Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government said on Sunday it was launching a major military campaign to recapture all areas of the country controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis.

The government’s armed forces would press the offensive “until the country is liberated from the grip of the terrorist militia,” Yemeni President Rashad al-Alimi said in a televised address. A military spokesman later called on the Houthis to lay down their weapons.

The Houthis, known formally as Ansar Allah, have held Yemen’s capital Sanaa and vast parts of the northwest, where most of the population live, since 2014. They have so far withstood a series of attacks over the years by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and their Western allies, and have updated their weaponry with the help of Iran.

The movement launched a surprise offensive last month, which captured the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait and some 150 kilometers (90 miles) of coast on the Red Sea in a matter of weeks, giving the Houthis new leverage over the international shipping route.

That advance also opened a new front in the wider US-Israeli war launched in February against Iran, to which Tehran’s responses included choking oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.

Houthis say they struck Saudi Arabia

As the Yemeni government, known as the Presidential Leadership Council, made its announcement, the Houthis said they had launched ballistic missiles and drones at Saudi Aramco sites in Riyadh and the Khurais area of Saudi Arabia.

They claimed the attacks caused major fires and were in response to what they said were 50 Saudi-led air and missile strikes in Yemen in the past 12 hours.

There was no immediate confirmation from Saudi Arabia.

Alimi said the decision to launch the counteroffensive came after all chances of de-escalating the conflict had been exhausted.

He thanked Saudi Arabia for its support and called on Yemen’s regional allies and international partners to support PLC forces and institutions.

Regional and Western officials had told Reuters earlier this week that Saudi Arabia and its Yemeni allies were planning to launch an assault on the Houthis, with the Saudis leading aerial combat and Yemeni forces fighting on the ground.

New front in Mideast war

The US is already providing intelligence to support Riyadh’s operations in Yemen, while some regional and European nations are providing mainly defensive military aid to the kingdom, six people with knowledge of the Saudi preparations told Reuters.

The United States’ war on Iran has decimated a layer of Iranian military and political leadership, but has also entangled Washington in a new engagement in the Middle East and depleted crucial military hardware.

Yemen has been mired in conflict for years, with an array of local armed groups and factions backed by competing regional and international actors.

After a popular uprising that was part of the Arab Spring movements in 2011, the Houthis, an armed group of Zaidi Shi’ite Muslims, captured Sanaa.

The Saudi-backed PLC, which is also recognized by the United Nations, has, since the Houthi takeover, controlled the south and east of the country, based in the former South Yemen capital of Aden.

Saudi Arabia entered Yemen’s civil war in 2015 at the head of an Arab coalition in support of the PLC, but failed to defeat the Houthis.

A truce agreed upon between the warring parties in 2022 largely held until this year, when the Houthis launched missile and drone attacks on Saudi shipping and oil infrastructure in a spillover from the Iran war.

Houthis on front foot

The Houthis have maintained the initiative on the ground since seizing control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in their lightning offensive last month that saw government forces collapse.

Bab el-Mandeb is the southern exit passage of the Red Sea, a key shipping route between the Mediterranean and Asia that has assumed even more importance this year as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

In the last 48 hours, the Houthis have also made gains against government and local forces on strategic hilltops near Yemen’s Taiz, military sources said, advancing on the last road between the city and Aden on the southern coast.

Houthi control over the Taiz-Aden road would lead to an effective siege of the city, Yemen’s third-largest, inhabited by hundreds of thousands of civilians and where thousands of government forces are also stationed.

The city is important not just for its strategic location; Alimi is from the region, and a siege of Taiz would amplify an already-dire humanitarian situation in the country.

Three in four ​families in parts of Yemen are going hungry from the impact of the surge in fighting, ‌which has displaced tens of thousands of people and disrupted supplies to millions, the World Food Programme said last week.