A fresh barrage of Houthi strikes hit Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, injuring more than 70 people and setting off fires at multiple oil sites and utility facilities across the kingdom’s south, officials said. The assault marked a sharp escalation in the renewed confrontation between the key US ally and Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement.
The latest attacks followed weeks of intensifying battles in Yemen, where fighting between the Houthis and Saudi-supported government forces has effectively broken a four-year pause in the country’s long-running civil war.
The sudden surge in violence has added another layer of strain to a region already unsettled by nearly three years of war, while also raising fresh concerns for an already fragile global economy.
Renewed hostilities between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis could place additional pressure on shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a vital corridor near the Arabian Peninsula for oil flows and international trade. The escalation also comes as the Iran war has brought shipments through the Strait of Hormuz close to a standstill, disrupting a waterway that previously carried roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil.
Combat has intensified across several fronts, including Yemen’s western coast, where government forces say they have seized ground in Hodeida, Taiz and Baydah provinces. The Houthis, meanwhile, have stepped up strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure and tankers operating in the Red Sea.
Houthi attacks hit oil facilities in southern Saudi Arabia
Tuesday’s early-morning attacks targeted what Saudi officials described as “civilian and economic facilities” in Abha, Jazan, Najran and Khamis Mushait, according to Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki, spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.
Al-Malki said 73 people were wounded in the strikes, among them women and children. He did not immediately release additional information about their conditions or the scale of the damage.
Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry said the attacks sparked fires at several oil installations and utility sites in the southern region. Operations at the affected facilities were temporarily halted, the ministry said in a statement.
The southern region houses major oil facilities, including a 400,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery in Jazan, which is one of Saudi Arabia’s largest. The Houthis had previously attacked the Abha airport.
The ministry said firefighters were battling the fires Tuesday morning.
Al-Malki called the attacks a “serious escalation” and a “flagrant violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty, and a direct threat to the security and safety of its citizens and residents.”
He vowed retaliation, saying that the Saudi-led coalition “will take all necessary operational measures to deter the terrorist Houthi militia with utmost resolve.”
The Houthis claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they were in response to recent Saudi attacks on the group across Yemen.
In a prerecorded video statement, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the groups military spokesman, said they fired dozens of ballistic missiles and drones at oil and economic facilities, as well as an air base in southern Saudi Arabia.
He said they attacked Jazan City for Primary and Downstream Industries, a major industrial and logistics hub on Saudi Arabia’s southwestern Red Sea coast. The group also attacked Aramco facilities in Najran and Abha, as well as King Khalid Air Base in Khamis Mushait.
Saree blamed Saudi Arabia for the escalation, warning that “every aggression against our country and people will be met with a firm response.”
Nasruddin Amer, deputy head of the Houthi media office overseeing the Saba news agency run by the group, took to social media to laud the attacks.
“The Saudi enemy has to understand that the time for committing crimes and massacres against the Yemeni people without response, deterrence or paying a price has ended,” he said.
The attacks came hours after the group blamed Saudi Arabia for an airstrike that hit a prison in Yemen’s northern province of Jawf. At least seven people, including a child, were killed and seven others were wounded in the strike in the Yemeni city of Hazem, the Houthis said.
Fighting forces about 18,500 people to flee their homes in Yemen
The latest escalation stemmed from a Houthi attempt to fly a plane from Tehran to Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, challenging a decade-long air and naval blockade by the Saudi-led coalition. A coalition airstrike struck the runway of the Sanaa airport, preventing the landing of the flight.
The Houthis responded with missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, and a blockade of Saudi shipping in the Red Sea, ending a 2022 truce that had largely halted fighting between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition.
The group also launched attacks on Saudi-allied forces inside Yemen, prompting government forces to respond with attacks on the Houthis across Yemen’s west coast and elsewhere in the country.
Government forces reclaimed territory from the Houthis in the provinces of Hodeida and Taiz, and attacked the group in the northern province of Jawf as well as the central provinces of Marib and Bayda.
The flare-up displaced about 18,500 people in Taiz and Hodeida in southwestern Yemen, further pressuring communities in southern Taiz and the West Coast, according to the International Organization for Migration.
“Families are arriving with nothing: no shelter, no food, no way to know if it’s safe to go back,” said Abdusattor Esoev, IOM Yemen’s Chief of Mission. “Many of these are people who have already been displaced once, twice, even four times before.”
Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year to try to restore the government to power.
The civil war has killed at least 150,000 people, according to UN estimates, and at times pushed the country to the brink of famine.
