Media linked to Yemen's Houthis announced Saturday the death of 22 people in Saudi strikes on the Sanaa region, controlled by the pro-Iranian movement, in conflict against the Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia which supports it. After almost daily Houthi missile and drone attacks in October against the Saudi kingdom, fighting seems to be intensifying in recent days on Yemeni soil, where the conflict resumed in July after four years of calm, opening a new front in the war in the Middle East.
“The number of victims of the massacre perpetrated by the Saudi enemy aircraft (...) rose to 22 people, including women and children, and that of the injured to 30,” reported the Saba agency, a report also put forward by the Almasirah channel. Saba initially recorded 11 dead and 20 injured. Almasirah released a video it said was taken in the village of Al-Shariyah, east of Sanaa, showing smoke rising from a struck site, piles of rubble and injured people hospitalized.
The agency, citing a local source, said planes from the military coalition led by Riyadh had targeted six houses in the area. Rescuers were also targeted, according to the same source, while rescue operations are still underway. Saudi authorities have not commented on this information. On Friday, a bombing on a market in the governorate of Taiz (west), whose town of the same name has been surrounded for weeks by the Houthis, killed several dozen people. Riyadh-backed government forces and the Houthis blamed each other for the attack.
The war in Yemen erupted in 2014 when the Houthis took control of the capital Sanaa and then other regions, triggering a Saudi-led military intervention in 2015. A truce was concluded in 2022 but fighting resumed this summer. This conflict has left hundreds of thousands of dead in one of the poorest countries in the world, in the grip of a vast humanitarian crisis. Since October, Saudi forces have regularly bombed Houthi positions in Yemen, while pro-Iranian fighters have increased their attacks against Saudi oil infrastructure and airports.
The coalition again reported on Saturday morning the interception and destruction of a cruise missile heading towards the Riyadh region, according to a message published on X by its military spokesperson Turki al-Malki. In September, a Houthi offensive on the Yemeni coast of the Red Sea allowed them to strengthen their hold on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a strategic crossing point for maritime traffic between Europe and Asia. They decreed a blockade in the Red Sea against the fleet of the Saudi kingdom, the world's largest exporter of crude oil. According to the Wall Street Journal, ships wishing to take this route are now contacting them to obtain their approval and thus secure their passage.
Syria will deploy thousands of soldiers in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where some are already there, to support the Yemeni government and its Saudi ally against the pro-Iranian Houthis, Yemeni officials told AFP. In this first foreign deployment since the resumption of hostilities on this front, Damascus will send 3,000 soldiers to help the kingdom targeted by repeated Houthi attacks, said some of these sources, others specifying that hundreds of Syrian soldiers were already present on both sides of the border between Yemen and the kingdom, which called for international aid.
