- Houthis say they struck a Saudi military landing ship and four patrol boats off Mokha in the Red Sea using ballistic missiles.
- They claimed the vessels were sunk or burned but the assertion could not be independently verified and Riyadh did not immediately respond.
- Attack is part of a Houthi maritime blockade after truce collapse, escalating regional tensions and threatening shipping and Yemen's humanitarian crisis.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels said on Monday they had targeted a Saudi military vessel and four accompanying boats in the Red Sea as part of their maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia.
Yahya Saree, military spokesperson for the Iran-backed group, said it had “succeeded in targeting a military landing ship belonging to the Saudi enemy, accompanied by four military patrol boats, in the Red Sea off the coast of Mokha, using several ballistic missiles”.
He went on to claim that the ship and number of other boats were sunk or burned, though the claim could not be independently verified.
Riyadh did not immediately respond to the announcement.
The Houthis announced their blockade on Saudi Arabia last month as a years-long truce collapsed in Yemen’s civil war between the rebels and the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government.
They have since targeted tankers in the Red Sea as well as Saudi oil infrastructure.
A Yemeni government military source told AFP on Monday that seven missiles had targeted the Bab al-Mandeb Strait connecting the Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea, and the coastline in the Yemeni city of Mokha, which is government-controlled.
“A Yemeni commercial vessel was targeted in Bab al-Mandeb as well as a camp belonging to government forces,” the source said without disclosing damage or casualties.
The Houthis later said they had used drones to target “a weapons depot belonging to reinforcements of the Saudi enemy” in the oil-rich province of Marib.
The resumption of the conflict in Yemen last month came amid the wider regional war between Iran and the United States, which had already disrupted shipping in the Middle East.
The Houthis earlier this month launched their deadliest attacks in years, killing 58 government troops, according to a military source, mainly in Marib province.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has called on the warring parties to immediately end the fighting, saying it risked plunging the country back into full-scale conflict.
Yemen’s war began in 2014 and has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths while dragging the country, the poorest on the Arabian Peninsula, into a humanitarian crisis.
The Houthis control vast swathes of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa and border areas adjacent to Saudi provinces along the Red Sea.
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