Yemen Front Line
On Tuesday, regional media reported that a massive explosion had rocked a coalition headquarters in the Marib province. No further information was provided, and no group claimed responsibility for the incident. The Saudi-led coalition did not comment on the reports.
On Saturday, the Saudi-led coalition reported the destruction of three Houthi drones launched toward targets in the kingdom.
Yemen, the poorest county in the Middle East, has been in a state of foreign-backed civil war since 2014, after Houthi militia forces seized control of Yemen’s capital of Sanaa in a popular uprising sparked by the cancellation of fuel subsidies. Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi fled the country to Saudi Arabia, and in March of 2015, Riyadh and a coalition of mostly Gulf allies intervened to try to restore him to power, without success.
In March 2021, after the withdrawal of direct US military support, Saudi Arabia floated a new peace initiative, including a nationwide ceasefire, to end their attacks. The Houthis, however, demanded that Riyadh first lift the economic blockade in place against Yemeni ports and airports to help resolve the dire humanitarian situation in areas they control.
The war in Yemen is feared to have killed as many as 233,000 people, both in fighting and as a result of the humanitarian crisis caused by the conflict, and the Saudi-coalition blockade. The United Nations estimates that three quarters of Yemen’s population is in dire need of basic food and medical assistance.
The Houthis are a moderate Islamist political and militant movement that emerged from the Houthi tribe, predominant in northern Yemen. Achieving a measure of popularity with their anti-corruption, social justice, anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism and Yemeni nationalism campaigns, the group supports a non-sectarian and democratic form of republican governance in Yemen.
With assistance from his sponsors, the president-in-exile, Hadi, pieced together a unity coalition in late 2020, comprised of representatives of his government - now operating out of Riyadh - and the so-called Southern Transitional Council (STC), a secessionist force in Aden, southern Yemen, which previously fought both the Houthis and Hadi's forces.
Members of the new government arrived in Aden in December only to be targeted by a massive missile strike on the airport. Protesters stormed the presidential palace in the de facto Hadi government capital in March, forcing government forces and their foreign allies to beef up their presence in the region. In recent weeks, Hadi, who remains in exile in Riyadh, and the STC have accused one another of reneging on a power-sharing agreement reached in late 2019, leading to renewed infighting.
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