Houthis fire missiles at Saudi in response to strikes on Hodeida

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they fired missiles and drones on Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi airstrikes on the strategic Red Sea city of Hodeida, in another escalation over vital shipping routes in the Middle East while the United States and Iran continue to vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Brig Gen Yahya Saree, the Houthis’ military spokesman, said in a prerecorded statement on Saturday that the attack targeted facilities of Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, in the Red Sea cities of Yanbu and Jizan.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom’s civil defense said alerts sounded multiple times early on Saturday in Yanbu and Jizan. There were no reported strikes overnight in Iran, in an apparent break of nearly two weeks of consecutive nights of US attacks, though tension remains high following a recent escalation between the two countries over Hormuz.

The rising tension in the Red Sea has threatened to further choke global shipping, because the rebels have said they would close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Saudi-linked shipping.

That strait, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is a vital shipping chokepoint, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Around 12 per cent of the world’s trade, including a quarter of global container traffic, passes through the narrows.

The Houthis targeted two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea this week. In response, Saudi Arabia struck the port city of Hodeida in Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said early Saturday. The strikes late Friday hit the city’s port as well as the state-run telecommunications corporation, injuring two people, said Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said it didn’t hit the port but struck “legitimate military targets” in Hodeida province, which “were linked to threats to commercial vessels in the Red Sea.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called for “diplomacy and dialogue” to solve the Yemen conflict without “military confrontations” in an interview published on Saturday in the State-run Iran newspaper.