A Yemen offensive against Houthis began on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026, when President Rashad al-Alimi of the internationally recognized government announced a nationwide military campaign to retake all territory held by the Iran-backed Houthis, as the movement claimed missile and drone strikes on Saudi Aramco sites in Riyadh and Khurais, Reuters reported via Defense News.
In a televised address, Alimi said the government’s forces would press the campaign “until the country is liberated from the grip of the terrorist militia.” A military spokesman later called on the Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, to lay down their weapons.
Alimi launches the Yemen offensive against Houthis
“Today, I announce the start of military operations to retake the remaining territory of the republic and extend the authority of the state and its institutions across the entire national territory,” Alimi said, according to the BBC. He said the decision came after all chances of de-escalation had been exhausted, thanked Saudi Arabia for its support and appealed to regional and international partners to back the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC).
Regional and Western officials had told Reuters earlier in the week that Saudi Arabia and its Yemeni allies were preparing an assault in which Saudi forces would lead the air campaign while Yemeni troops fought on the ground. The Boston Report covered those preparations in Saudi Houthi assault planned for the Red Sea strait. Six people familiar with the planning told Reuters the United States is already providing intelligence to support Riyadh’s operations, while some regional and European governments are supplying mainly defensive military aid to the kingdom.
Houthis claim strikes on Saudi Aramco
As the PLC made its announcement, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had fired ballistic missiles and drones at Aramco sites in Riyadh and the oil-producing Khurais area. The Houthis claimed the attacks caused major fires and described them as retaliation for what they said were 50 Saudi-led air and missile strikes in Yemen over the previous 12 hours. There was no immediate confirmation from Saudi Arabia, Reuters said.
Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV said Saudi strikes on Sunday wounded at least two people, the BBC reported. Yemen’s government said on Saturday that its forces had hit Houthi targets in Sanaa, Saada and near Taiz.
Taiz and the Bab el-Mandeb at stake
On the ground, the Houthis have held the initiative. Last month the group seized the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and roughly 90 miles of Red Sea coastline in a rapid offensive that saw government forces collapse. In the 48 hours before Alimi’s speech, military sources told Reuters, the Houthis also took strategic hilltops near Taiz and advanced on the last road linking the city to Aden, the government’s base.
Houthi control of the Taiz–Aden road would effectively place Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, under siege. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and thousands of government troops are in the city, and Alimi himself is from the region. Our earlier report on the Houthi Taiz offensive targeting coastal approaches outlined why the mountains west of the city matter for control of the strait.
The Bab el-Mandeb, the southern gateway to the Red Sea, has become even more important this year as an alternative export route while Iran restricts traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. On Oct. 4, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Hormuz would stay closed until Tehran’s conditions are met, Al Jazeera reported, leaving both of the Arabian Peninsula’s main maritime chokepoints contested at once.
Humanitarian toll and the wider regional war
Yemen’s civil war dates to the Houthis’ capture of Sanaa in 2014; a Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015. A 2022 truce largely held until this year, when the Houthis began attacking Saudi shipping and oil infrastructure as a spillover from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran that began in February. After several years of relative calm, the war reignited in July, according to the BBC.
The World Food Programme said last week that three in four families in parts of Yemen are going hungry because of the surge in fighting, which has displaced tens of thousands of people and disrupted supplies to millions. The government’s new campaign therefore raises immediate questions about civilian protection around Taiz, the security of Red Sea shipping lanes and how far Saudi Arabia is prepared to go in a ground war it has struggled to win for more than a decade.