Yemen announces offensive as Houthis tighten grip near Red Sea shipping route

Hundreds of thousands of people in Yemen’s third-largest city face the risk of an effective siege as Houthi forces advance towards its last road to Aden, according to Khaleej Times. The fighting around Taiz is also a struggle for the heights overlooking Bab el-Mandeb, the southern gateway to the Red Sea and a key passage for trade between the Mediterranean and Asia.

Against that backdrop, Yemeni President Rashad al-Alimi announced a major military operation on Sunday to recover territory held by the Houthis. In a televised address, he said the campaign aimed to restore government control and state institutions throughout the country. The announcement sets out a broad goal, while the battlefield account in the report shows government forces facing pressure around both a major city and a strategically important coastline.

Al-Alimi said the operation’s aim was to recover the remaining territory outside government control and restore state authority nationwide.

A shipping gateway and the mountains above it

The Houthis have retained the initiative on the ground despite preparations for a government counteroffensive, Khaleej Times reported. Weeks earlier, they seized the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait in a rapid push down the coast that saw government forces collapse. The passage has become more important this year as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, which the report describes as effectively closed by the Iran conflict. That makes control of this stretch of Yemen’s coast a matter with consequences beyond the country’s land war.

Military sources cited in the report said Houthi forces had gained strategic hilltops near Taiz over the previous 48 hours, advancing against government troops and local forces. Their movement brought them closer to the last road linking Taiz with Aden, the seat of Yemen’s government. Taking that road would effectively besiege a city that is home to hundreds of thousands of civilians and also holds thousands of government troops.

The mountains matter to the coastal struggle as well. Mohammed Al-Qadhi, a veteran journalist from Taiz who now works as a political analyst, said taking the rugged high ground in the western Taiz countryside would strengthen Houthi control over the flatter Bab el-Mandeb coastal area. In his assessment, those positions would protect the Houthis from attacks behind their coastal forces and make a government effort to recover the coast harder.

A renewed war with a growing civilian cost

The latest fighting follows a period of relative restraint. Saudi Arabia entered Yemen’s civil war in 2015, leading an Arab coalition backing the internationally recognised government after the Houthis forced it out of Sanaa. A truce reached in 2022 largely endured until this year. According to the report, Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi shipping and oil infrastructure then brought the spillover from the Iran war into that fragile arrangement.

For Taiz, the stakes are humanitarian as well as military and political: al-Alimi comes from the region. The World Food Programme said last week that three in four families in parts of Yemen were going hungry as intensified fighting displaced tens of thousands and disrupted supplies to millions. The next developments to watch are whether the announced operation can reverse Houthi gains, and whether the Taiz–Aden road remains open as forces contest the heights above the shipping corridor.