Yemeni forces fighting for the internationally recognised, Saudi-backed government said on Sunday that they were withdrawing from an area overlooking the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, leaving the Iran-aligned Houthis in control. The retreat hands the Houthis greater leverage over the maritime chokepoint, which is one of the world's most important and busiest routes for seaborne commodity and goods shipments, particularly from Asia to Europe via Egypt's Suez Canal.
The southern Yemeni forces said they were redeploying from Dhubab Airport and the Bab el-Mandeb area, west of Taiz Governorate, toward Aden, where the government is based. They said the move prioritised securing the capital and neighbouring governorates and strengthening front lines against existing threats, as the Houthis, who control much of the north including the capital Sanaa, increase pressure on the southern areas still under government control.S1S2
Government forces had launched a military campaign in October to recapture the strategic coastal areas from the Houthis, who had pushed south in September in an attempt to seize Yemen's entire Red Sea coast and brought the group within reach of Bab el-Mandeb. The escalation broke a 2022 UN-brokered truce and has become another volatile front in the wider US-Israeli war on Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz also disrupted by Iran on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, a dual squeeze that would further isolate Gulf oil producers from their main shipping routes.S1S2
Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, a key US ally and the world's biggest crude exporter, have disrupted flights and oil supplies during the nine-month-old Iran war, with strikes on Saudi ports, airports and facilities of state oil company Saudi Aramco, including the Red Sea oil export hub of Yanbu. Saudi Arabia has responded by striking Houthi targets in Yemen, a country mired in civil war since 2014 and grappling with one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.S1S2
Fighting is intensifying around the western region of Taiz, where the city hosts about half of the 300,000 people displaced across Yemen by the latest fighting. The city remains besieged, with aid supplies unable to enter and civilians unable to leave, and humanitarian conditions are worsening.S1S2
