Yemen's Government Strikes Back at Mocha as Saudi Jets Fly 129 Raids
Government forces counter-attacked toward Mocha, striking Houthi vehicles and fighters on the Dhubab road, while the Houthis claimed Saudi aircraft flew 129 strikes in 48 hours. A projectile from Yemen hit Saudi Arabia’s Jazan region, damaging a mosque; the week’s fighting has killed more than five hundred by both sides’ counts, and some 1,400 people have fled by sea to Djibouti. Iraq dismissed a military commander over the drones launched at the Saudi pipeline from its soil.
The counter-attack’s significance is its existence more than its progress: a government that lost its entire coast in a week needed to prove it retained an offensive capability at all, and the road between Mocha and Dhubab is where that proof is being purchased in vehicles and men. The Saudi tempo — sixty-five strikes a day by the Houthis’ count — shows Riyadh fighting the only way it can without the ground force it disbanded, and the refugee flow to Djibouti measures the price: the Red Sea’s poorest shore absorbing the fallout of its richest’s war. Iraq’s quiet dismissal of a commander is the week’s most interesting accountability — Baghdad signalling it will not be the axis’s launchpad for free. Watch whether the counter-offensive reaches Mocha — or stalls into the front line the strait now sits behind.