Cairo, July 27:
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said Saturday that they fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi airstrikes on the strategic Red Sea city of Hodeida, in an escalation over vital shipping routes in the Middle East while the United States and Iran vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Brig Gen Yahya Saree, the Houthis’ military spokesperson, said in a prerecorded statement that the attack targeted facilities in the Red Sea cities of Yanbu and Jizan that belong to Aramco, the world’s largest oil company.
Saudi Arabia’s civil defence said alerts sounded multiple times early Saturday in both cities, but the kingdom didn’t comment further.
There were no reported strikes overnight in Iran, in an apparent break from nearly two weeks of consecutive nights of US attacks.
The Houthis have said they would close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Saudi-linked shipping in retaliation for the kingdom’s blockade on Yemen and a recent attack on the international airport in Yemen’s rebel-held capital, Sanaa.
“Nothing short of ending the aggression and lifting the blockade, otherwise, it’s all illusion and mirage,” Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi-led Supreme Political Council governing rebel-controlled territories in Yemen, said of what it would take for the Houthis to not blockade the Bab-El-Mandeb.
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 its container traffic, passes through the narrows.
The Houthis targeted two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea this week. In response, Saudi Arabia struck Hodeida, the Saudi-led coalition opposing the rebels said Saturday. The strikes late Friday hit the port and the state-run telecommunications corporation, injuring two people, said Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesperson for the Houthi-run health ministry.
The Saudi-led coalition said it didn’t hit the port but struck “legitimate military targets” in Hodeida province that “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 Saturday by the state-run newspaper called Iran.
Iran condemns Ukrainian attack on commercial vessel
“Iran had a peaceful night,” Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesperson for Iran’s Health Ministry, posted on X. US Central Command didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Unlike the previous 13 nights, it didn’t announce new strikes.
But Iran’s foreign ministry condemned what it called a Ukrainian attack Saturday on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, saying one person was killed and another was hurt and calling it an act of aggression.
In a separate statement, Araghchi said he spoke with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas about it and that Tehran demanded a response. Ukraine’s diplomatic representative to Iran was summoned, Iranian state media reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier said on X that Ukraine “achieved very strong results with long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea — including vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran.”
While efforts at mediation between the US and Iran continue, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to travel to the United States next week and meet with President Donald Trump in Washington on Tuesday, his office said Friday. They last met in Washington in February, weeks before they launched the war.
A tenuous ceasefire that halted major operations for weeks has seemed to unravel this month. The US accused Iran of striking three ships in the Strait of Hormuz and responded by striking dozens of targets in Iran, which retaliated by firing at US-allied Gulf Arab states.
The US military has renewed its blockade of Iran’s ports. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has advised residents of neighbouring countries to stay away from bases with US troops.
The war has killed more than 3,400 people in Iran, according to its Health Ministry. Eighteen US service members, 24 civilians in Israel and smaller numbers of civilians including foreign workers and mariners have been reportedly killed across the region.
In Lebanon, more than 4,000 people have been killed since Iran-backed Hezbollah militants fired at Israel in support of the Islamic Republic two days after the war began and Israel responded with strikes and ground forces. Thirty-eight Israeli troops have also died.