The Saudi-led military coalition launched strikes on Houthi-controlled targets in Hodeidah, a vital port city on Yemen's Red Sea coast, late on Friday, marking a sharp escalation in a conflict that had been largely dormant for four years. Coalition spokesman Major-General Turki al-Maliki said the strikes targeted legitimate military sites linked to Houthi threats against commercial shipping, and denied that Hodeidah's port itself was hit — insisting that all Yemeni ports remained open to humanitarian and commercial vessels. Witnesses, however, reported explosions near the port, and the Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah television channel said telecommunications facilities in Hodeidah and on Kamaran Island were struck. Two people were wounded in the attacks — a worker in Hodeidah and a woman on Kamaran Island.

The strikes came in direct response to a Houthi maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia, announced on 20 July, and subsequent Houthi drone and missile attacks on Saudi commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Saudi state media confirmed that one Saudi ship, the NCC MASA, sustained minor hull damage but continued to its destination. The Houthis — formally known as Ansar Allah, an armed movement that controls much of northern Yemen including the capital Sanaa — had framed their blockade as retaliation for a Saudi-backed government strike on Sanaa's international airport the previous week. That attack shattered an informal truce that had held since 2022, the longest pause in hostilities since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015.

Hours after the Friday strikes, the Houthis claimed a missile attack on Jizan, a Saudi city on the southern Red Sea coast, saying it sparked fires in the area. Saudi Arabia's civil defence agency briefly issued warnings to residents in Jizan and the port city of Yanbu before lifting them, without elaborating on the nature of the threat. The Houthi political bureau warned that