Iran-backed Houthis capture Yemen’s Red Sea coastline on Bab-el-Mandeb Strait

Fire detection data showed high-temperature readings at several sites where infrastructure for the underground pipeline is located, but it was unclear what transpired. Neither Saudi officials or the Houthis have commented.

Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, warned that the risk of the conflict deepening had “increased substantially.”

“The important change is that the Houthis are now attacking both pillars of Saudi security simultaneously: southern Saudi territory and the Kingdom’s Red Sea strategic depth,” he said in written comments before the Houthis’ reported capture of Perim. “Riyadh still desperately wants to avoid another 2015-style war. But its room for restraint is narrowing,” he said.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said on X on Thursday that “freedom of navigation and international trade through the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab remain safe and uninterrupted,” adding that “there is no need for international concern” about the strait.

It was not clear if that would last, however.

Krieg emphasized that while the Houthis appeared to be taking swift control of the Red Sea coastline in Yemen, the idea that they might gain “full control” of Bab el-Mandab should be approached “cautiously.”

“Even control of Mokha, Dhubab and Perim would not give the Houthis sovereign control of the entire strait because the western littoral remains outside Yemen,” he said. “It would, however, give them a dramatically stronger ability to contest, threaten and potentially deny commercial use of the waterway.”

The result, he said would “constitute an extraordinary shock to the global trading system.”

The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration warned on Friday at least 46,000 people had so far been displaced in Yemen since fighting escalated last week.

It said that figure spanned the West Coast and Taiz governorates as of Thursday, with the numbers of those displaced “alarmingly rising by the hour.”

The organization called on all parties to the conflict to “guarantee safe humanitarian access and to protect civilians, aid workers and assets on the ground.”