Houthis Strike Saudi Air Base at Khamis Mushait, Riyadh Answers With 54 Airstrikes as Bab al-Mandeb Falls Under Houthi Control

The Houthi movement, which controls much of northern Yemen and now its entire Red Sea coast, said on Monday it had fired dozens of ballistic missiles and drones at King Khalid Air Base near Khamis Mushait, targeting hangars, radars, runways and ammunition depots. Saudi Arabia has not confirmed damage at the base. The Saudi-led coalition said missiles and drones hit civilian areas in Khamis Mushait, Abha and Taif, wounding 13 people and damaging seven homes and two vehicles. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the attack answered more than 300 Saudi airstrikes on Yemen over five days. He later said Saudi aircraft had carried out 54 raids in 24 hours across Lahj, Taiz, al-Jawf, Marib and Hajjah, flown from bases at Khamis Mushait and Taif.

Saudi civil defense authorities had sent alerts on Tuesday morning warning of possible danger in six cities, including Yanbu, the kingdom's main Red Sea oil port, where millions of barrels of crude are loaded each day. The other cities named were Jeddah, Taif, Abha and Jazan. Authorities later said the alerts had been lifted and gave no further detail. Saudi Arabia had already shut its East-West pipeline, the line that carries crude from the kingdom's eastern oil fields to the Red Sea coast, after drones launched from Iraq targeted it.

The military exchange follows a shift on the ground. Houthi fighters reached Perim Island, which divides the Bab al-Mandeb into two shipping lanes, after government forces withdrew, completing the group's control of the strait through which roughly a tenth of seaborne oil moves. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says nearly 94,000 people have been displaced since fighting intensified this month, more than 48,000 of them in Taiz and Lahj, with over 2,000 crossing by boat to Djibouti.

Oil prices rose through the escalation. Brent settled at $107.82 a barrel on Monday and West Texas Intermediate at $103.22, after a rally of more than 9 percent the previous week. Diplomacy moved the other way: Iran's foreign ministry said Saudi Arabia asked to postpone talks in Oman on a temporary shipping lane through the Strait of Hormuz, which would have been the highest-level meeting between Tehran and Gulf governments since the war began in February.

The Financial Times described the pressure on Riyadh as a two-sided campaign by the Houthis and by Iraqi armed factions, and called it the most serious challenge Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has faced in years. The Houthis say their attacks respond to American and Saudi actions in the regional war. Saudi officials describe them as strikes on civilian infrastructure. The campaign is also depleting the arsenal on the American side. A United States military assessment reported by The Hindu found that munitions spending in the Iran war has produced strategic inventory shortfalls and exposed bottlenecks in the industrial base that resupplies interceptors and precision weapons. Air and missile defense determines how long Gulf export infrastructure stays protected, and that resource is finite.