Saudi-led jets open Operation Dawn of Yemen along the Red Sea coast

A Saudi-led coalition said on Monday that 100 fighter jets were already flying sorties under the name Operation Dawn of Yemen, aimed at Iran-backed Houthi forces along the Red Sea coast and farther north in Sana'a. Spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki said the jets had secured what he called air protection of the Bab al-Mandab strait and had destroyed hundreds of Houthi targets, including command centres, camps and weapons stores in Sana'a and Saada.

The air claim followed a Sunday statement by Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council. He said he was announcing the start of military operations to retake remaining territory and to extend state authority across the country. On Monday he called the push a decisive phase. The government he leads is the one recognised abroad. It has spent years based in Aden while the Houthis have held Sana'a since 2014.

The ground piece on Monday came from the Giants Brigades, southern units aligned with that government. They opened an attack on the eastern flank of coastal ground the Houthis had taken in a recent advance. Government forces said they had cut the road between Mocha and Dhubab. Al-Maliki's account placed some Houthi fighters under siege in Dhubab district, close to the strait, and said others had left by boat across the Red Sea. Dhubab includes an airport. Control of that strip decides who can see traffic entering the strait from the south.

The announcement is larger than the ground taken so far. Al-Alimi set the aim as all remaining Houthi-held territory, including the capital. The recognised government recently lost stretches of Red Sea coastline and ground around Bab al-Mandab after a fast Houthi offensive. Hours before his Sunday statement, Houthi units were reported to have cut a supply road into Taiz, a city the government still holds and the Houthis have besieged for years. A campaign launched while a supply road is being cut is a campaign that starts on the back foot.

Saudi Arabia's role is direct. Al-Maliki spoke for the coalition, not for a Yemeni staff. Riyadh has also put money on the table. The Saudi Programme for Yemen's Development and Reconstruction disbursed more than 224 million riyals, about 59.7 million dollars, for operating costs and salaries. Al-Alimi thanked the kingdom in the same speech in which he announced operations. Salary payments and airstrikes are being run as one package: keep the Aden government's books open, and give its brigades air cover.

The Houthis answered in kind over the weekend. They said they had fired ballistic missiles and drones at Saudi Aramco sites in Riyadh and at the Khurais area, and described the launches as a reply to about 50 coalition strikes in the previous 12 hours. Saudi Arabia has not confirmed those hits. Flames were reported at an oil facility south of Riyadh. A separate strike, which the Houthis called Saudi, hit a factory in Sana'a on Sunday. Neither side's battlefield account has been independently counted.

The strait is the prize both descriptions keep returning to. Bab al-Mandab is the southern gate of the Red Sea. Shipping that cannot use Hormuz, already shut under Iranian conditions, has even less room if Bab al-Mandab is also under fire. Al-Maliki's phrase was air protection, not control of the water. Air cover can stop a column on a coast road. It does not by itself reopen a sea lane. The Houthis have said they hold islands in the strait. Government forces say they have cut one coast road. Those two claims can both be true on the same morning.

Casualty figures are still uneven. One related count put deaths in the fight for the coastal heights at up to 169. Monday's coalition statement did not publish a strike log, a bomb count, or a list of the hundreds of targets. Without that list, the figure is a claim of scale, not an inventory.

What happens next is whether the Giants Brigades can hold the Mocha-Dhubab cut after the jets leave the day's wave. If they can, Aden has a road back toward the strait. If the cut closes again, Operation Dawn of Yemen will have been an air day with a ground headline, and Taiz will still be short of a supply road.