A military official from Yemen’s internationally recognized government said a Houthi strike Friday on the port city of Mokha killed eight people, while the Iran-backed rebels said they had also attacked a Saudi oil installation.
A years-long truce in Yemen’s civil war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed authorities appeared to collapse last month, with the rebels carrying out deadly attacks on government-held areas.
The rebels have also declared a maritime blockade on Saudi ports, attacking ships in the Red Sea and claiming strikes on oil infrastructure.
The Houthis “fired five missiles at commercial ships unloading at the port, and two ships are on fire,” the Yemeni official said of the attack on Mokha, which was also hit earlier this week.
Two security personnel were among the eight killed, the official said.
Houthi media, meanwhile, quoted a rebel military source as saying the group had attacked a Saudi Aramco site in Najran, in southwest Saudi Arabia, “by means of a drone, and the operation achieved its objective.”
The group had said it carried out an attack on an Aramco facility in Jizan the day before.
The Houthi threat to shipping and Saudi oil facilities comes in parallel with Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has become the central flashpoint between Tehran and Washington in efforts to end the Middle East war, launched by the US and Israel in February.