Yemen fighting near Bab al-Mandab kills at least 129 in two days

Fighting between Yemen's Houthis and government forces has killed at least 129 people since Thursday, according to an AFP count compiled on Friday from military and medical sources. A government officer said 66 of his side were dead. Sources close to the Houthis put their dead at 62. One civilian death was separately reported. Neither side has issued an official total.

The Houthis opened a ground attack on Thursday, with rockets and drones, on the Red Sea coast and inland around Taiz. Government officers told AFP the aim was to isolate Mokha, the port that has been under fire for weeks, and to reach ground that looks down on the Bab al-Mandab. The strait is the southern gate of the Red Sea. Ships that use Suez pass through it.

On Friday the army said it had retaken al-Khazan and al-Makahna hills in Jabal Habashi, west of Taiz city. On Saturday it said a counterattack was under way south of al-Jarrahi with the Giants Brigades, that Hays district was back under government control, and that its aircraft had flown more than 15 strikes along the western coast in Taiz and Hodeida. Local media, citing a military source, said government units also took the Saeed Taha and Dhiban heights in Hayfan.

A missile hit a restaurant in Mokha, state television said, killing civilians. Medical sources in Houthi areas counted at least 42 rebel dead at an earlier point in the count, before the combined figure rose. The numbers move with each briefing. The direction of the fight is clearer than the precise toll: the Houthis want the heights above the strait, and the government is trying to push them back before those heights become launch sites against ships.

Yemen's wider war is more than a decade old. A 2022 truce with the Saudi-backed government largely held until July, when the Houthis broke it as the broader Middle East war spread. The group has spent two years firing at commercial ships in the Red Sea. Control of the land above Bab al-Mandab would give those attacks a shorter range and a harder site to hit from the air.

Mokha matters because it is the last government-held port of any size on that stretch of coast. If it is cut off, the hills above the strait become a Houthi problem for every navy that now escorts traffic toward Suez. Insurance rates on that lane already moved in 2024 and 2025. A land battle that puts launchers on the ridge would move them again.

The Giants Brigades are a southern force that has fought the Houthis before. Their appearance in the Saturday brief is a sign that Aden is pulling in units that can still manoeuvre. Air strikes are the other tool. Fifteen sorties in a day is a heavy local effort for this air force. It is not a campaign that can last at that rate without outside supply.

Foreign governments have treated Yemen as a side theatre of the Iran war and the Red Sea crisis. The 129 dead in two days are the price of that side theatre becoming a fight for a strait. If the government holds the hills, the week is a bloody draw. If the Houthis keep the high ground, the next incident will not be a clash inland. It will be a ship.

No ceasefire talk was attached to Saturday's statements. The count will rise. The map around Mokha and Jabal Habashi is the one to watch through the weekend.

Shipping desks in London and Singapore already price the Bab al-Mandab as a war-risk lane. A ridge in Houthi hands does not close the strait by itself. It shortens the flight time of a drone and complicates the escort pattern that the United States, Europe and India have used since 2024. That is why a provincial hill fight is being read in navy headquarters. The 129 dead are local. The strait is not.