Yemen’s Houthi movement struck the presidential palace complex in the southern city of Aden on Thursday, 15 October, killing five people and wounding 16, according to the country’s health minister. The prime minister and cabinet members were unharmed. The Houthis said they had bombed a “Saudi military operations headquarters”, a claim Reuters could not verify. It was the first attack on the palace in the current phase of the conflict.
The strike came alongside a sharp escalation against Saudi Arabia. A coalition spokesman said the Houthis had launched 20 attacks this month on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing 17 people and wounding 333, and that attacks on Abha airport killed three and wounded 28. The coalition said it had destroyed 127 weapons storage sites and launch platforms in Yemen. The Houthis have warned airlines that Saudi airspace is unsafe, except around Mecca and Medina, and the governing council of the International Civil Aviation Organization has condemned the attacks on civil aviation.
Fighting between the Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces resumed last month, and government troops recently began a campaign to retake Houthi-held areas near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. A 2022 truce had held until this year. The war began in 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and a Saudi-led intervention followed in 2015.
The conflict is now tied to the wider regional war that began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February. Iran has supplied the Houthis with weapons, money and training, according to the Reuters report, though Tehran denies it. The danger for the world economy is that two chokepoints, Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, are both under threat while oil already trades above 100 dollars. Maritime officials counted 12 vessels attacked near Hormuz between 5 and 11 October, and another tanker was reported struck this week.