Yemen’s Houthis fire missiles at Saudi Arabia in biggest flare-up in years

Yemen’s Houthi movement fired missiles at Saudi Arabia after accusing the kingdom of bombing an airport under their control on Monday, breaking a four-year truce in the conflict between the kingdom and the Iran-aligned group.

Saudi Arabia intercepted missiles “launched by the terrorist Houthi militia toward the southern region,” the spokesperson for a Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen said on X.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said ‌they had targeted the international airport in Saudi Arabia’s Abha, the capital of a mountainous southern region bordering Yemen where many Saudis escape the summer heat.

The strikes are the first claimed by the Houthis against Saudi Arabia since an informal truce went into effect in March 2022 following Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure.

Monday’s violence threatened renewed conflict on Saudi Arabia’s southern border after Iranian drone and missile attacks targeting its eastern regions and Riyadh subsided following an April truce in the Iran conflict.

The country’s size relative to other much smaller Gulf states meant it fared better during the war, continuing to export oil via a pipeline from the ⁠east to its west coast on the Red Sea, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. A wider conflict with the Houthis, who have in the past targeted Red Sea shipping, could ‌challenge that.