Houthis say Saudi aircraft flew 32 strikes after attacks that wounded 73 in the kingdom

Houthi spokesman Nasruddin Amer said on Wednesday that Saudi-backed aircraft had flown 32 airstrikes overnight across Taiz, Hodeida, Jawf and Marib. Houthi-run al-Masirah television used the same count and the same four provinces and did not list targets or immediate casualties. A military official on the government side told Xinhua the raids hit Houthi-held ground and gave cover to forces already fighting there. Riyadh did not immediately comment.

The strikes followed a Tuesday barrage in which the Houthis fired ballistic missiles and drones at four southern Saudi cities: Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran. Saudi authorities said 73 people were wounded and that fires broke out at energy sites. Houthi statements named Abha International Airport, King Khalid air base in Khamis Mushait, and Saudi Aramco facilities. NASA satellite images showed a thick black plume over the Jazan refinery and white smoke from an oil distribution centre in Abha. Operations at some energy plants paused and then resumed.

Yemen's wider war had sat under a four-year truce that broke in recent weeks as Houthi units and Saudi-backed government forces restarted ground fighting in the west. The UN humanitarian office said more than 5,600 households have been displaced across Taiz and southern Hodeida since Thursday, and that at least 11 civilians were hurt or killed in the past week, including two children. Four more bodies were pulled on Wednesday from a Houthi-run prison in Al-Jawf that was hit earlier in the week, taking that strike's dead to 23, the movement said.

The oil market treated the Saudi fires and the U.S.-Iran tanker war as one risk. Brent crossed $100. Jazan and Abha are not Ras Tanura, but smoke over an Aramco distribution centre is enough to reprice a barrel when Hormuz is already under fire. The Houthis are an Iranian partner. Their Tuesday list of Saudi targets and Washington's Tuesday list of Iranian tankers landed on the same news cycle. That does not prove a single command. It does mean two fronts opened against Saudi and American energy infrastructure within hours.

Yahya Saree, another Houthi spokesman, accused Riyadh of escalating by bombing Yemen and said the movement would answer. That is the grammar of a war that has restarted, not of a raid that will stay limited to 32 sorties. Government forces want air cover in Marib and Taiz. The Houthis want Saudi plants to burn often enough that Riyadh reconsiders the campaign. Civilians in the four Yemeni provinces, and workers at Abha and Jazan, are the people in between.

Saudi silence on the 32-strike claim is not the same as a denial. Riyadh rarely itemises its Yemen sorties in real time. The useful numbers that are already public are 73 wounded in the kingdom, 23 dead in the Jawf prison, 5,600 displaced households, and a $100 barrel. Those figures will move again if Thursday's satellite pass still shows smoke over Jazan, or if the prison count keeps rising.