Yemeni military launches large‑scale offensive against Houthi positions

Yemen’s armed forces announced a large‑scale series of strikes on Houthi targets on Monday, following a government declaration of a new offensive to reclaim all lost territory amid recent advances by the Iran‑backed rebel group.

The offensive establishes an ambitious objective for the struggling Saudi‑backed government, coming a month after it lost extensive portions of the Red Sea coast and territory around the Bab al‑Mandab Strait, a crucial choke point for global shipping.

The Houthis, fighting against the internationally recognized government, launched a rapid offensive in September that has resulted in hundreds of combatant deaths on both sides and displaced over 145,000 people, according to United Nations data.

Although Yemen’s conflict predates the broader Middle East war triggered by US‑Israeli strikes on Iran, the fighting there has become the most active front in the wider regional conflict in recent weeks.

Hours after the government’s statement, a Yemeni military spokesman said that its forces had carried out more than 1,000 strikes targeting Houthi artillery and rocket launchers, defensive fortifications, approach and reinforcement routes, supply lines, logistics assets, and combat reinforcements.

Nevertheless, the strikes have not yet halted the Houthis’ continued advances on the ground.

On Sunday, the rebels effectively encircled the strategic city of Taiz after severing the primary supply route connecting the city to the interim government’s capital, Aden.

Vast humanitarian crisis

“It is a significant development, but I think it is still too early to say that we are witnessing a decisive turning point,” Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst for Yemen at the International Crisis Group, told AFP.

Taiz itself stays under government control, yet it has long been surrounded on its northern, eastern and western sides by Houthi fighters, remaining one of the principal battlegrounds in Yemen’s protracted civil war.

The conflict has also drawn Saudi Arabia—leader of the anti‑Houthi coalition since 2015—into the fighting, with the rebels regularly claiming attacks on the kingdom’s territory in recent weeks and announcing a blockade of Saudi ships in the Red Sea.

Yemen is among the world’s poorest nations and has endured a severe humanitarian crisis since the civil war erupted in 2014.

In that year the Houthis captured the capital Sanaa from the Saudi‑backed government and subsequently seized control of much of the northern region, prompting Riyadh’s international coalition to intervene the following year.

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