Houthis Count 26 Saudi Strikes as the Oil Route Tightens

Yemen’s Houthis said Friday that Saudi F-15s flew 26 strikes into Taiz in 24 hours, part of 300 raids the group counted that week. The jets, they said, left Khamis Mushait Air Base. Riyadh had no immediate comment.

The raids came after the Iran-aligned group seized Yemen’s Red Sea coast and the islands in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the path Saudi crude has used since the Strait of Hormuz tightened. More than 112,000 people have been forced from their homes in two weeks.

26 Strikes in 24 Hours, by Houthi Count

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said on X that Saudi F-15s carried out the 26 strikes on Taiz after taking off from Khamis Mushait Air Base in southwestern Saudi Arabia. He put the week’s total at 300 raids across nine provinces, flown by F-15s and Typhoon jets from Khamis Mushait and King Fahd.

The nine provinces he named were Taiz, Hajjah, Marib, Al Jawf, Bayhan, Amran, Lahj, Hudaydah and Saada. Saudi authorities issued no immediate reply to that Friday tally. Ground fighting still ran around the Kahbub range in Lahj, near the strait, and through southwestern Taiz and oil-rich Marib.

THE FRIDAY TALLY

• The 24-hour claim: 26 F-15 strikes on Taiz, launched from Khamis Mushait, according to Sarea.
• The week’s claim: 300 strikes across nine provinces, using F-15 and Typhoon jets from Khamis Mushait and King Fahd.
• Riyadh’s reply: No comment on the Friday numbers; coalition spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki had earlier said the coalition would answer Houthi attacks “responsibly and firmly.”
• The ground fight: Clashes Friday around Kahbub in Lahj, southwestern Taiz and Marib.

Those figures are the Houthis’ own count. Independent confirmation of each sortie is not public. Earlier in the week Sarea had issued other running totals, which is why Friday’s 26 and 300 are the numbers that belong to that statement, and only that statement.

Late Friday into Saturday, Saudi Civil Defence issued, then lifted, danger alerts for Riyadh and Al-Kharj after explosions were heard in the capital. Officials said the danger had passed. It was the first such warning in Riyadh since the Houthis announced a sea embargo on Saudi shipping in July.

Mocha, Perim and the Coast They Took

The air campaign is the loud part of a fight the Houthis already reshaped on the ground. On 10 September they took the Red Sea port of Mocha, also spelled Mokha, after government-aligned forces pulled back. The next day those forces left Perim Island, called Mayyun, in the middle of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Local officials said Houthi boats then moved onto the island.

Sarea said the coastal push netted 5,400 square kilometers and freed 210 of the group’s men from west-coast prisons. The group said navigation of the strait stays open except for Saudi vessels. That is the same line it has used since 20 July, when it declared a maritime embargo on ships serving Saudi ports after a strike on Sanaa airport.

HOW THE COAST FELL

1. 20 July 2026: Houthis declare a maritime embargo on vessels serving Saudi ports.
2. 3 September 2026: Fighting surges on the west coast; IOM later records about 18,500 people displaced in 72 hours in Taiz and Hudaydah.
3. 10 September 2026: Houthis take Mocha as government-aligned units withdraw.
4. 11 September 2026: Government forces leave Perim Island; Saudi Arabia shuts the East-West pipeline after above-ground pumping stations are hit.
5. 18 September 2026: Sarea claims 26 strikes on Taiz; IOM reports more than 112,000 people displaced.

The anti-Houthi line on that shore was not one army. International Crisis Group describes an amalgam of the National Resistance, Giants Brigades, National Shield and Taiz axis units, each with its own chain of command. The United Arab Emirates, which had built some of those formations, left Yemen in January after a split with the Yemeni government and Riyadh. Once the camp covering Mocha’s approaches fell, the port lost its depth and the withdrawal handed the Houthis the coast.

Saudi Oil Now Has Nowhere Cheap to Go

The strike count sits on top of a simpler problem. When the Strait of Hormuz tightened under overlapping Iranian and U.S. limits, Saudi Arabia pushed crude west to Yanbu and out through Bab al-Mandeb. The U.S. Energy Information Administration puts 8.1 million barrels a day through Bab el-Mandeb in the second quarter of 2026, up from 5.4 million in late 2025. Hormuz, in the same tables, fell from 21.6 million barrels a day to 4.9 million.

Then the Houthis went after the workaround. Kpler found Saudi crude transits of that strait averaging above 3.5 million barrels a day in early July, then fallen close to zero in August. Russian and Sudanese crude on the same water stayed fairly steady, which points to a Saudi-specific squeeze, not a dead sea. Kpler still counted five loaded ships on the route in the week before Sarea’s Friday claim. The corridor is not sealed. For Saudi barrels, it is barely open.

OIL THROUGH TWO STRAITS

Yanbu did the heavy lifting after Hormuz tightened. Kpler recorded Yanbu loadings of 4.14 million barrels a day in June, against a 2025 west-coast baseline of 0.75 million. That is an extra 3.39 million barrels a day moved away from Ras Tanura, which had averaged 5.4 million. The Red Sea terminals were carrying the kingdom’s export plan. They still are. The exit at the bottom of the sea is the part that broke.

Kpler’s Count in the Red Sea

Riyadh sent barrels north instead of south. Saudi crude transits of the Suez Canal rose from zero in May and June to nearly 500,000 barrels a day by late July. Loadings into Ain Sukhna, Egypt, reached 1.32 million barrels a day in July, almost double June’s 770,000. Departures from Sidi Kerir, the Mediterranean end of the SUMED line, jumped to a record 2.4 million barrels a day in the first week of August, from a July average of 1.3 million. About 700,000 barrels a day of that Sidi Kerir flow was booked for Thailand, India and the Philippines, a turn away from the terminal’s usual European buyers.

The VLCC Front Empire left Muajjiz on 25 July with 1.2 million barrels, transited Suez part-laden, took on more crude at Sidi Kerir on 6 August, and headed for South-Central Asia by the Cape of Good Hope. Kpler timed that voyage at about 40 days, against about eight days from Yanbu to India’s west coast. The Cape adds about 40 days to a round trip. Freight rises with the clock. Saudi crude inventories climbed to 75 million barrels by early August, 63 percent of storage, from 61 million barrels and 52 percent in June.

The Long Way Through Egypt

SUMED can move 2.5 million barrels a day from Ain Sukhna to Sidi Kerir on paper. It has never been run at that rate; throughput peaked at 1.77 million barrels a day in 2016. A full VLCC cannot transit Suez laden, so cargoes are split, pumped and reloaded. Kpler notes that routing west-coast Saudi crude to Asia via Suez roughly doubles voyage time, which is a poor fit for East of Suez refiners. Aramco cut September official selling prices by $0.50 a barrel for Asian light grades and by $3 a barrel for European buyers, a bid to pull more barrels toward the Mediterranean.

War-risk cover does more to empty a strait than a minefield. Insurers pulled back from Saudi-linked ships after the July embargo, and traffic fell before any navy had to fight a blockade in the lane. The Houthis have also talked of mining the waterway. They do not need to close it to all flags. They only need Saudi-linked hulls to stay out, which is already close to the case.

More Than 112,000 People Were Driven Out in Two Weeks

The people under that air war are already moving. Abdusattor Esoev, IOM’s chief of mission in Yemen, told reporters on Friday that the agency had recorded more than 112,000 internally displaced people since the fighting began, most of them in the previous two weeks, mainly along the west coast and in Taiz and Lahj. The Friday briefing also listed Aden, Hudaydah, Abyan and Taiz as the spread of that caseload.

WHAT AID AGENCIES COUNTED

• New displacement: More than 112,000 people inside Yemen in two weeks, IOM, 18 September.
• Sea crossings: More than 3,000 people reached Djibouti; UNHCR counted more than 2,400 of them in the previous week, mostly women, children and older people.
• Older caseload: Nearly 4.8 million Yemenis were already displaced, UNHCR.
• Health system: Only 60 of more than 5,000 health units were fully working in a WHO check done before this round of fighting.
• UN staff: 73 UN personnel remain detained by Houthi authorities, some since 2021, said Alessandra Vellucci of the UN Information Service in Geneva.

Esoev described a woman in Taiz with four small children who gave birth in the open, with no clinic and no shelter, then sat under a torn scrap of plastic tarpaulin. Francesco Galtieri of UNFPA spoke of Aziza, who ran from Mocha with her four daughters, was burned in the shelling, and did not stop until she reached safety. He estimated 2,000 pregnant women among the newly displaced and about 200 due to give birth soon.

Our resources are very, very, very limited and our stocks will be depleted very soon.

Abdusattor Esoev, IOM Chief of Mission in Yemen, Geneva briefing

The IOM’s 2026 Yemen plan already put 22.3 million people need assistance in the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan, before this coast offensive. Friday’s UN briefing said nearly half of Yemen’s 41 million people needed aid, with one in two people in government-held areas in high hunger. WHO reported 2,883 casualties in the country since 6 August, a figure given at a 15 September UN session, before the Friday displacement count was completed.

Across the strait, Sandrine Desamours of UNHCR said new arrivals in Obock, Khor Angar, Moulhoule and Godoria told staff they had fled bombardment, shelling and gunfire. Some were making the crossing for the second time, having fled in 2015. Men who had left relatives behind could not go back for them because fuel is short in Yemen. Djibouti, a country of about one million people that already hosts around 36,000 refugees, is preparing for as many as 10,000 more. IOM said a small number of Ethiopian migrants are now on the same boats.

Why Riyadh Is Bombing After Losing the Shore

Saudi jets are over Taiz because the coastal army Riyadh backs is no longer on the coast. Crisis Group says the Houthis spent August probing Mocha with missiles, drones and explosive boats, then cut the roads that tied Taiz, Hudaydah, Mocha and Bab al-Mandab together. Once that camp fell, air power became the tool left to keep the group from digging in on the heights above the lane. The 26-strike day is that tool on a clock.

The group’s demands have grown with the map. In 2023 it had a track toward salary payments, some oil-revenue sharing and limited flights from Sanaa. Crisis Group says the coastal win has been followed by calls for an end to Saudi support for the Yemeni government, a Saudi withdrawal from Yemen and war reparations. Cross-border attacks and the embargo on Saudi-linked shipping are the pressure. Iran gains a second chokepoint while Hormuz is already pinched, which raises the cost of the wider war for buyers who still need Gulf barrels.

President Donald Trump declined two requests from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on 10 September to strike the Houthis, according to people familiar with those calls. U.S. officials later met Houthi representatives in Oman. Washington has said it stands with Yemen’s government and has not joined a new air war. That leaves Riyadh with its own jets, a fragmented partner force on the ground, and a closed pipeline.

The East-West Pipeline Closed on 11 September

The East-West line had been moving 3 to 4.5 million barrels a day toward the Red Sea, Crisis Group says, after Iranian-backed groups in Iraq hit the above-ground pumping stations. Saudi Arabia shut the largely buried conduit on 11 September, the same day Perim changed hands. Yanbu can still load what is already in west-coast tanks. It cannot be fed at the old wartime rate until that pipe, or Hormuz, works again.

Al-Maliki said Houthi attacks on Khamis Mushait, Abha and Taif caused minor to moderate injuries to 13 people and damaged seven homes and two vehicles, and that the coalition would deal with those attacks firmly. The Houthis have claimed strikes on King Khalid Air Base, on Yanbu’s Aramco plants, and on a tanker off the Red Sea coast. Each claim is theirs. What is not in dispute is that Saudi energy sites on the west coast are now part of the same fight as Mocha’s ruined defensive line.

WHERE EXPERTS DISAGREE

• Air campaign first: Riyadh may judge that it needs some military success on the western coast, Crisis Group writes, pairing airstrikes with aid to Yemeni units that want the ground back, while it hunts other ways to move oil.
• Freeze in place: The same group argues a truce in Yemen is an urgent priority, with Oman best placed to freeze the map: Houthis halt the push around Taiz and the attacks on Saudi Arabia; Riyadh and the Yemeni government stop opening new fronts.
• No large return to 2015: Crisis Group says Saudi Arabia has little appetite for another heavy ground war of the kind that followed the 2015 intervention, and will look to partners for Red Sea defence rather than occupy the coast itself.

Vellucci said UN aid in Houthi-held areas had become “untenable,” with UN premises occupied and staff detained. Esoev asked donors for food, shelter, health care, water and sanitation for people already on the road. Neither plea changes the map the jets are flying over.

Hold the Coast, Lengthen the Voyage

The Houthis now sit on Mocha, on Perim, and on the rest of Yemen’s Red Sea shore. They say they will not molest general traffic and will keep squeezing Saudi hulls. Kpler’s August near-zero on those hulls, and the five loaded ships counted later, show how far that squeeze has already gone. Jets over Taiz can hit camps, trucks and radar. They cannot tow a VLCC through a strait that underwriters have already priced as a war zone.

The 2022 truce had frozen a war that began when the Houthis took Sanaa in 2014 and a Saudi-led coalition entered in 2015. Fighting returned in July, first at sea and then down the coast. Friday’s 26 strikes, and the 300 across the week, are the air answer to that return. The 112,000 people IOM counted are the bill that landed first. Saudi crude is still moving, just farther, slower and through Egypt, while the short road out of Yanbu stays in Houthi sight.

Civil Defence said the overnight danger in Riyadh had passed. The displaced families in Taiz and Lahj have not passed out of the count. Until someone opens Hormuz, the East-West pipe, or the Bab al-Mandab lane to Saudi ships, the jets will keep flying and the long voyage will keep getting longer.