CAIRO — Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they fired missiles and drones on Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi airstrikes on the strategic Red Sea city of Hodeida, in another escalation over vital shipping routes in the Middle East while the United States and Iran continue to vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the Houthis’ military spokesman, said in a prerecorded statement on Saturday that the attack targeted facilities of Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, in the Red Sea cities of Yanbu and Jizan.
There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom’s civil defense said alerts sounded multiple times early Saturday in Yanbu and Jizan.
There were no reported strikes overnight in Iran, in an apparent break of nearly two weeks of consecutive nights of U.S. attacks, though tension remains high following a recent escalation between the two countries over Hormuz.
The rising tension in the Red Sea has threatened to further choke global shipping, because the rebels have said they would close the Bab el Mandeb strait to Saudi-linked shipping.
That strait, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is a vital shipping chokepoint, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Around 12% of the world’s trade, including a quarter of global container traffic, passes through the narrows.
The Houthis targeted two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea this week. In response, Saudi Arabia struck the port city of Hodeida in Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said early Saturday. The strikes late Friday hit the city’s port as well as the state-run telecommunications corporation, injuring two people, said Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said it didn’t hit the port but struck “legitimate military targets” in Hodeida province, which “were linked to threats to commercial vessels in the Red Sea.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called for “diplomacy and dialogue” to solve the Yemen conflict without “military confrontations” in an interview published Saturday in the state-run Iran newspaper.
“Iran had a peaceful night,” Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour posted on X on Saturday morning.
The U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, unlike the previous 13 nights, it did not announce new strikes.
A tenuous ceasefire that appeared to halt major operations in the conflict that started with American and Israeli attacks on Iran has seemed to unravel in recent weeks. Iran was accused of striking three ships in the strait, and the U.S. responded by striking dozens of targets in Iran, which retaliated by firing at Arab states in the region.
The Strait of Hormuz has been at the center of the conflict. The U.S. military on Friday fired on a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman that was trying to breach its renewed blockade of Iran’s ports, while Iran targeted U.S.-allied Gulf Arab countries.
U.S. embassies in the Middle East alerted American national in the region on Friday that options to leave could become more limited, as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard advised residents of neighboring countries to stay away from bases with U.S. troops.
The war has so far killed more than 3,400 people in Iran, according to the Iranian Health Ministry. Eighteen U.S. service members, 24 civilians in Israel, and smaller numbers of civilians were reported dead in countries across the region.
In Lebanon, more than 4,000 people have been killed, as well as 38 Israeli troops, after the Iran-backed Hezbollah militants fired at Israel in support of the Islamic Republic.
