Yemen's Houthi rebels have launched a wave of missile and drone strikes against Saudi Arabia, triggering civil defence alerts in several southern Saudi provinces and wounding at least 73 people in what officials described as the heaviest such attacks in years. The strikes targeted oil infrastructure and military installations in Khamis Mushait, Abha, Najran and Jizan — cities in Saudi Arabia's southern regions bordering Yemen — setting fires at oil sites and causing temporary shutdowns. The Houthis said the attacks were retaliation for dozens of Saudi-led coalition air strikes they claim hit Houthi-controlled provinces across Yemen over a 12-hour period, including al-Jawf, Marib, Taiz, Hodeidah, Saada and al-Bayda.

The surge in violence has shattered a UN-brokered ceasefire that largely held for nearly four years. The renewed fighting began in earnest in July and dramatically escalated last week when the Houthis launched a major offensive aimed at seizing territory around the Bab al-Mandeb strait — a strategically vital maritime chokepoint at the southern entrance to the Red Sea through which significant volumes of Saudi oil exports pass. Government-aligned forces have responded with counterattacks on multiple fronts, including advances in al-Jawf governorate, which lies in northern Yemen and serves as a potential gateway to the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa. Meanwhile, a strike on a prison in the al-Jawf town of al-Hazm has killed at least 32 people, according to the Houthis, who blamed the Saudi-led coalition. In the central Marib governorate, the Yemeni government accused Houthi forces of shelling a civilian area, killing three children, including a baby, and wounding six others.

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1,000 people have been killed or wounded since late August, with tens of thousands displaced. The renewed conflict in Yemen is unfolding against the backdrop of a broader regional crisis following US-Israeli strikes on Iran, which has drawn in multiple regional actors. Iran, which backs the Houthis, rejected an Arab League statement accusing it of interfering in Yemen, insisting the Houthis act independently. Pakistan, which signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement last month alongside Saudi Arabia and Türkiye — a mutual security pact — warned that continued Houthi attacks on Saudi territory could trigger the agreement's collective defence provisions. The European Union also called on the Houthis to immediately halt all attacks, including strikes on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Yemen has been mired in civil war since 2014, when the Houthi movement — formally known as Ansar Allah — seized Sanaa and ousted the internationally recognised government, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention the following year. The conflict killed an estimated 150,000 people and pushed Yemen repeatedly to the brink of famine, creating one of the world's worst humanitarian crises before the 2022 ceasefire brought a fragile pause. The current escalation risks undoing years of painstaking diplomatic efforts, with civilians on frontlines from the western coast near the Red Sea to the deserts of al-Jawf and the highlands of al-Bayda bearing the heaviest costs of the renewed fighting.