SANAA, Sept. 10– Yemen’s Houthi group said Thursday that international shipping through the Red Sea and the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait remained safe, seeking to ease concerns after its forces seized the strategic Red Sea port city of Mocha on Yemen’s western coast.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the group’s spokesperson, said in a statement posted on social media platform X that freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab remained “safe and regular,” insisting that the group’s operations posed “no threat” to international shipping.
Abdul-Salam said the group’s ongoing military operations had specific targets and were “defensive” in nature, without providing further details.
He didn’t mention the group’s maritime ban on Saudi shipping, which was announced on July 20. The Houthis have claimed a series of attacks on Saudi tankers since launching the naval blockade.
Houthi forces seized Mocha in southwestern Taiz province and the strategic Hanish Islands in the Red Sea earlier Thursday, forcing government forces to retreat southward and pushing the front line closer to the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
The Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, is a major route for international trade and energy shipments. Mocha lies about 70 km north of the strait’s narrowest point.
The government forces on Thursday designated a swath of territory along the western coast as a “kill zone,” saying they would use “all types of weapons and firepower” against Houthi troops advancing into the designated zone.
A military official told Xinhua that government forces withdrawing from Mocha had regrouped near Bab al-Mandab and were preparing to launch a counteroffensive “in the upcoming hours” to retake territory seized by the Houthis.
The widening fighting in Yemen marks the most serious escalation since a UN-brokered truce in 2022 largely halted major hostilities.
Yemen’s conflict began in late 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and expanded across much of the country’s north, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in 2015 in support of the internationally recognized Yemeni government. (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
