Houthis take the Hanish islands and claim a strike on King Khalid Air Base

Yemeni government officials and a Houthi official said on 14 September that Ansar Allah fighters had deployed on Greater Hanish and Lesser Hanish, two islands about 160 kilometres north of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The officials said hundreds of government-allied troops had withdrawn from the archipelago before the move. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief journalists.

The islands had been held by UAE-backed southern allies of Yemen’s internationally recognised government. Their fall follows the Houthi capture last week of the Red Sea port of Mokha and of Mayun, also called Perim, which sits inside the strait that links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. That chain now gives the group a string of positions along the shipping lane Saudi Arabia has used more heavily since attacks and blockades squeezed the Strait of Hormuz.

The same day, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said the group had fired dozens of ballistic missiles and drones at King Khalid Air Base in Khamis Mushait, in southwestern Saudi Arabia. In a statement carried by al-Masirah television, he said the barrage targeted fighter-jet hangars, radar systems, runways, ammunition depots and other facilities and caused what he called significant damage. Saudi authorities issued no immediate confirmation of casualties or of damage to the base.

Saudi Civil Defence issued an alert in Khamis Mushait and later said the danger had passed. It told residents to keep following official instructions and to avoid gathering or filming. A resident of the city told AFP he heard intense blasts and that fires burned for a long time. Civil Defence had also issued brief alerts overnight in Khamis Mushait, Abha and areas closer to the Yemeni border.

Sarea said the operation answered what the Houthis described as more than 300 Saudi airstrikes across several Yemeni provinces in five days, launched by F-15 and Typhoon jets from Khamis Mushait and Taif. He said the group would keep striking inside Saudi territory while those flights continued, and that any further rise in the campaign would meet a broader reply. Those figures come from the Houthi account. Riyadh has not published a matching tally.

Yemen’s civil war had been largely frozen for about four years before it reignited in July, after a dispute over an Iranian flight into Sanaa and a Houthi declaration of a maritime blockade on Saudi shipping. The current offensive began around 3 September. Government forces said on 13 September that they had retaken some ground in Taiz province and that airstrikes had killed at least ten Houthi fighters, according to the official Saba news agency.

The government in Aden called the loss of Mokha and Mayun a painful blow and said it would send more forces to the Red Sea coast. More than 80,000 people have been displaced in two weeks of fighting, according to reporting that cited local officials. Greater and Lesser Hanish sit roughly 32 kilometres from the US military presence in Djibouti across the narrow water. Control of the islands does not by itself close the strait, but it shortens the distance from which the Houthis can watch, threaten or strike ships that have already rerouted away from Hormuz.

Saudi officials said last week that 73 civilians were injured in earlier Houthi attacks on Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran, and that fires briefly disrupted energy sites. Iran’s foreign ministry said the Houthis act independently. Tehran has an interest in the outcome. A tighter Houthi hold on Bab el-Mandeb raises the cost of the Red Sea alternative just as East-West pipeline flows out of Yanbu have been constrained.

Oman postponed Iran-Gulf talks in Salalah that had been set for 14 September. Muscat said the pause served consensus. Tehran said Riyadh asked for the delay. Those talks were meant to cover maritime routes. The island seizures and the claimed strike on King Khalid give both sides a new set of facts to argue over before any new date is set.

The next military question is whether government-allied units try to retake Mokha and the Hanish group, or whether they concentrate on holding Aden and the remaining southern ports. The next commercial question is how long shippers treat Bab el-Mandeb as a usable substitute for Hormuz. Neither answer is settled by a single night of claims. What is settled is the map: the Houthis now sit on the islands that watch the lane, and they say they can reach the air base that has been used to bomb them.