Al-Alimi orders a campaign to retake Houthi-held Yemen, as Riyadh sends SR224 million

Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, said on Sunday that government forces had been ordered to retake the territory still held by the Houthis and to put state institutions back over the whole country.

In a televised address he said: "I announce today the commencement of military operations to reclaim the remaining territories of the republic and to extend the authority of the state and its institutions across the entire national territory." He said the armed forces, security forces and all military formations had been told to carry out an approved plan until the country was liberated from the Houthis. State institutions, he added, would stay on full alert until the mission was finished.

He was explicit about who the operations were not aimed at. "The military operations we are about to launch are not a war against our people in Sanaa, Hodeidah, and Sa'ada," he said. He asked residents in militia-held areas to stay away from Houthi gathering points and to keep children out of the fighting. One of the priorities he named was the resumption of public-sector salaries and the settlement of arrears.

The announcement landed on top of fighting already underway around Taiz. Colonel Majed Abdullah al-Nazili, spokesman for the internationally recognised government's forces, said those forces had carried out 257 precision targeting operations on Saturday against Houthi sites, movements and military positions. Al Jazeera reported initial estimates of at least 700 Houthi fighters killed in those operations. That figure is an estimate from one side of the war, not a count confirmed by an outside monitor.

Early on Sunday the Saudi-led coalition said its forces had carried out 97 precise targeting operations against Houthi reinforcements on the Tor al-Baha front and the Taiz axis, using warplanes, drones, artillery, missiles and snipers. Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki said Saudi Arabia had the right to defend itself from Houthi attacks and pledged operational support to the Yemeni military. He said the Houthis' ties to external agendas had brought chaos and devastation to Yemen. Arab News reported that he framed the support as continuing until the militia was eliminated.

Shortly before al-Alimi spoke, Saudi Arabia announced a financial package worth more than SR224 million, about $59.7 million, for the Yemeni government. The stated uses were salaries, operating expenses, the budget deficit and general economic support. Al-Alimi thanked the Saudi leadership, government and people for standing with Yemen, and said Yemen would keep treating the kingdom as a partner in security.

The map he is trying to reverse has been stable in its broad lines since 2014, when the Houthis took Sanaa and the recognised government fell back on Aden. The line has moved in the last month. Houthis seized Mocha in mid-September, a port on the Red Sea side of the Taiz fight, and have pressed around strategic ground near the Bab al-Mandeb. Government spokesmen have also claimed strikes in Sanaa and Saada. Roads into Taiz have been closed during the exchanges.

The Houthis answered the wider escalation with strikes of their own. Their military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had targeted an Aramco facility in Riyadh with ballistic missiles and drones, and named the attack as retaliation for Saudi strikes on Sanaa and other provinces. Saudi officials did not immediately confirm a hit. The claim sits inside a war that already includes the Red Sea, the Saudi interior and, since February, the larger confrontation between the United States, Israel and Iran.

Al-Alimi also asked Yemen's "brothers and friends in the international community" to stand with the recognised government. He does not control all of the anti-Houthi camp. Southern forces, Saudi-backed units and Emirati-backed units have spent years in parallel chains of command. An order from the Presidential Leadership Council does not by itself put those chains under one plan. The SR224 million package is the part of Sunday's announcement that can be spent without a battlefield result: it is salary money, and unpaid salaries have been a standing grievance in both government-held and Houthi-held areas.

The open question is whether Sunday's order changes the Taiz front or restates a war that has already been fought there for years. The numbers on the table for the next week are the 257 operations claimed for Saturday, the 97 claimed by the coalition for Sunday, and the SR224 million that Riyadh has actually allocated.