Strikes shut down key Saudi pipeline as Iran-backed Houthis tighten grip on crucial shipping lane

Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, warned that the risk of the conflict deepening had “increased substantially.”

“The important change is that the Houthis are now attacking both pillars of Saudi security simultaneously: southern Saudi territory and the Kingdom’s Red Sea strategic depth,” he said in written comments before the Houthis’ reported the capture of Perim. “Riyadh still desperately wants to avoid another 2015-style war. But its room for restraint is narrowing,” he said.

A statement issued by Houthi forces on Friday said that “maritime navigation is safe for all companies except for Saudi vessels,” vowing to strike Saudi targets “until the aggression stops and the blockade against our dear people is lifted.”

The statement said that nine aircraft had been shot down by Houthi forces, with hundreds of opposing troops “killed, captured or wounded” in the rapid advance, and a number of prisoners “liberated.”

Krieg emphasized that while the Houthis appeared to be taking swift control of the Red Sea coastline in Yemen, the idea that they might gain “full control” of Bab el Mandab should be approached “cautiously.”

“Even control of Mokha, Dhubab and Perim would not give the Houthis sovereign control of the entire strait because the western littoral remains outside Yemen,” he said. “It would, however, give them a dramatically stronger ability to contest, threaten and potentially deny commercial use of the waterway.”

The result, he said, would “constitute an extraordinary shock to the global trading system.”

Amr al-Bidh, from the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a political and military group in Yemen, blamed this in part on the Saudi-backed government forces’ focus on pushing back STC from areas it expanded its control to last year. The STC and Saudi-backed forces had been fighting the Houthis together in the country’s north, but that coalition descended into infighting.

“We are also concerned about the situation because they might come to the south, and we have to defend the south from them,” he said in a video interview Friday.

The growing crisis was “not just about oil,” he said. “It’s about families who are displaced and moving from one place because of because of this war.”

The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration warned on Friday at least 46,000 people have so far been displaced in Yemen since fighting escalated last week.

It said that figure spanned the West Coast and Taiz governorates as of Thursday, with the numbers of those displaced “alarmingly rising by the hour.”

The organization called on all parties to the conflict to “guarantee safe humanitarian access and to protect civilians, aid workers and assets on the ground.”

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