Saudi airports at Jazan and Najran hit as government forces claim Dhubab

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority said on Tuesday that attacks on Monday evening hit King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz airport in Jazan and the airport at Najran, both close to the Yemen border. The authority said the strikes caused three minor injuries and material damage. Yemen's Houthis, who call themselves Ansar Allah, said late on Monday that their forces had targeted sites across southern Saudi Arabia, including airports and military positions.

The airport strikes landed on the same night as a ground push by forces loyal to Yemen's internationally recognised government. Officials told reporters that those forces, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, had retaken Dhubab, just north of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, and the towns of Bab and Hadeid. The officials spoke without their names attached. Witnesses said they saw government tanks and troops entering the towns. The coalition said the offensive, which it has called Yemen Dawn in some accounts, began early on Monday under air cover.

Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Malki said 100 fighter jets had supported the government forces. He said the coalition had secured air protection over the Bab el-Mandeb and had destroyed hundreds of Houthi targets. The coalition also said it had destroyed a ballistic missile launch platform in Sanaa, which the Houthis have held since 2014, and that Saudi naval forces had opened an operation in Hodeidah governorate.

What the strait is worth

Bab el-Mandeb is the narrow gate between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Shipping that cannot use it has to round the Cape or wait. The Houthis have spent the years since late 2023 firing on commercial traffic in the southern Red Sea, which is why a government foothold at Dhubab is more than a pin on a local map. Fernando Carvajal, a former United Nations Security Council adviser on Yemen, told Al Jazeera that Mocha, further up the coast, would decide the next phase. Dhubab is the southern piece. Mocha is the port that would turn a raid into a hold on the coast.

Houthi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said in a recorded statement that the group had used ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones against King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, an oil refinery at Rabigh on the Red Sea, and military bases. Those claims are wider than the damage the Saudi aviation authority has confirmed. The confirmed public damage on the Saudi side, as of the authority's Tuesday statement, is two regional airports, three minor injuries, and material harm. A claim against the capital's airport and a refinery is a separate allegation, and Riyadh had not matched it with a damage report in the statements carried on Tuesday morning.

Outside capitals and an open coast

Euronews reported that Pakistan and Turkey had agreed to deploy troops to Saudi Arabia as the offensive opened. That report sits beside the coalition's own number: 100 jets already in the air over the southern coast. If the troop agreements hold, the war around the strait stops being a Saudi-Yemeni fight with outside air power and becomes a fight with outside ground contingents as well. The Houthis still hold Sanaa and most of the highland west. Losing Dhubab, Bab and Hadeid, if those captures stand, does not decide the highlands. It does put government armour on the northern lip of the strait for the first time in this offensive.

The next verifiable markers are narrow. One is whether government forces are still in Dhubab after the first Houthi counterfire. Another is whether Saudi authorities confirm or deny the claimed hit on King Khalid airport and the Rabigh refinery. A third is whether the naval operation named in Hodeidah produces a named landing or only strikes. Until those three are on the record, the durable fact from Tuesday is a pair of damaged regional airports, three wounded people, and a claimed advance to the edge of the strait under a 100-jet umbrella.