Yemen's Houthis claim 58 Saudi air strikes as battle for Bab el-Mandeb escalates

Yemen's Houthis said Saudi warplanes carried out 58 air strikes across six provinces in 24 hours, as fighting over the Red Sea's Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint intensifies, Arab language media reported.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the strikes hit Taiz, Lahj, Al-Jawf, Hajjah, Al-Bayda and Saada in the 24 hours to September 13, flown by F-15 jets from the Khamis Mushait airbase in southwestern Saudi Arabia. He gave no figure for casualties, and Riyadh did not confirm the raids.

The claim tops a fortnight of the heaviest Saudi-Houthi fighting in years, which has shattered an informal truce holding since 2022 and put a second Middle Eastern oil chokepoint in the spotlight following the Iranian blocking of the Hormuz Strait.

The Iran-aligned group, formally called Ansar Allah, has pressed a west-coast offensive since imposing a maritime blockade on Saudi shipping in July, and now controls most of Yemen's Red Sea coastline.

The advance carries weight beyond the battlefield: Bab el-Mandeb, the strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, is the southern gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, and Saudi Arabia has leaned on that route to move crude since Iran disrupted the Strait of Hormuz earlier in 2026.

On September 12, Hizam al-Assad, a member of the Ansar Allah political bureau, said the Houthis had completed an operation to seize territory abutting Bab el-Mandeb.

In the preceding days, the group had captured the Red Sea port of Mokha and the island of Perim, which divides the strait, after government forces withdrew. Al-Assad said shipping through Bab el-Mandeb was proceeding normally and that only Saudi vessels would be targeted.

Later on September 13, according to Iranian sources, the Houthi group reported a massive explosion at the King Khalid Air Base in southern Saudi Arabia; IntelliNews could not verify this. 

Israeli media also reported that the Saudis have asked for indirect assistance from Israeli military and intelligence, according to Israel Hayom newspaper.

The fighting has rattled energy markets. Oil moved above $100 a barrel for the first time since May, and Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline, the line it uses to pump crude to the Red Sea coast and bypass Hormuz. Following that strike, the International Energy Agency said the global oil supply has decreased by 5.7mn barrels per day (b/d) this year.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pressed US President Donald Trump for direct intervention as the Houthis closed on the strait, according to people familiar with the calls. Trump declined to order strikes but agreed to help Saudi forces with targeting and intelligence. The Houthis had earlier threatened to renew attacks on Red Sea shipping if regional tensions worsened.

Ansar Allah has controlled Sanaa and much of northern Yemen since 2014, when it drove the internationally recognised government into exile and drew a Saudi-led coalition into a war that has run for close to a decade. The latest coastal gains give the group its firmest hold yet over one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.