Yemen’s Houthis said on Friday (September 18, 2026) that Saudi Arabia had launched 26 strikes against areas under their control in the past 24 hours, as the pro-Iran group and Yemen’s Riyadh-backed government clash in the country’s revived civil war.
The group, whose heartland is among the Zaidi Shia Muslims of northern Yemen, has declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia, which had used to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, itself closed by the West Asia war, for its oil exports. Figures from maritime tracking firm Kpler showed that Saudi exports via the Bab al-Mandab Strait had dropped since July, although five loaded ships had passed through in the last week. The Houthis insist that navigation of the strait is open and free except for Saudi vessels.
The group said that the number of Saudi strikes on its positions had reached 300 over the last week, saying they targeted areas across Houthi-held Yemen. The war, which began in 2014 with the Houthi capture of the capital Sanaa, had been largely frozen since 2022 but erupted back into life in July. On Friday (September 18), the UN said that the renewed fighting had displaced more than 112,000 people while nearly 3,000 others had fled across the sea to Djibouti, heaping further misery on an already struggling population. In 2025, the UN warned that 17 million people in Yemen were struggling to eat and a further million faced extreme hunger.
This month, the Houthis, who already held most of Yemen’s populated areas, launched a lightning offensive to take over the country’s entire Red Sea coast, giving them control over the vital Bab al-Mandab strait. Its intervention escalated the war, which has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in the impoverished country. Saudi Arabia has, since 2015, led a coalition backing the internationally recognised government.
