Yemen's government just retook the strait that carries the world's trade
2 hours ago · 6 October 2026Share
A U.S. Navy sailor mans a machine gun aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham in the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait between Djibouti and Yemen. File photo. U.S. Department of Defense Current Photos · Public domain
Yemen's government says it just took back the strait that moves a huge chunk of the world's trade.
Saudi-backed Yemeni forces say they've retaken the Bab al-Mandeb strait, the Dhubab area and the port city of Mocha from the Houthis. This all happened two days ago. The government is calling it Operation Yemen Dawn.
So here's the backstory. About three weeks ago, the Houthis swept in and grabbed Mocha, Bab al-Mandeb and nearby Red Sea islands. That handed them control of the Yemeni side of one of the world's most important shipping lanes.
Now the government says it's taken it back.
Maj Gen Turki al-Malki, the Saudi-led coalition's spokesman, says 100 fighter jets are flying in this counteroffensive. Round-the-clock air support for troops on the ground. Air cover over the whole strait. He says 324 high-value Houthi targets have been destroyed.
A lot of outlets are repeating those numbers. Nobody has independently verified them.
Rashad al-Alimi, who heads Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, announced the operation. He says the goal is to restore state institutions, retake the capital Sanaa, and end what he calls the Houthi coup. Yemen's armed forces say they've also opened a separate offensive on Sanaa itself.
But here's the thing. The Houthis say none of this is true.
Fuad Sinan, the Houthi deputy governor of Taiz, put out a video statement. He says quote "we are currently roaming around in the streets of Mocha city" and that this disproves the media reports about the city being taken.
So who's right? Nobody can fully say yet.
Four Yemeni government officials told Reuters that forces only reached the outskirts of Mocha. Not the city itself. People who spoke to AFP wouldn't confirm Mocha had actually been captured either. Al Jazeera and The National both say the wider battlefield claims can't be independently verified right now.
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Contains modified CBERS4 satellite imagery showing Djibouti City and the surrounding area near the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a geopolitically strategic location. File photo. Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE · CC BY-SA 2.0
The coalition also says its navy hit Houthi weapons near Hodeidah in a separate operation. And the government says hundreds of Houthi fighters got surrounded in Dhubab, some fleeing by boat. The Houthis haven't confirmed any of that.
Hisham al-Omeisy studies Yemen for the European Institute of Peace. He says the real turning point isn't the coast. It's inland. Places like Taiz, al-Bayda and Ibb. The Houthis are still fighting near Taiz, and are reported to have captured Turbah, a town on the Taiz-Aden road, just before this counteroffensive started.
And the Houthis are hitting back outside Yemen too. They say they struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and an Aramco refinery in Rabigh. Riyadh hasn't confirmed either one. Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority says three people were wounded in separate Houthi attacks on airports in Jazan and Najran.
And this is where it gets bigger than Yemen.
Turkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have agreed to activate what they call collective deterrence measures. This is under the Mecca Defence Alliance, a pact the three countries signed about two months ago. An attack on one is treated as an attack on all three, the same idea as NATO's Article 5. This is the first time the pact has ever been activated.
Khalid bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's defence minister, says the alliance has agreed to respond to the attacks and everyone responsible for them.
Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, says quote "they have a right to defend themselves" about Saudi Arabia, and that Yemeni forces are going to try to retake territory.
And people are dying on both sides of this.
The World Health Organisation says more than 5,000 people have been killed or wounded in Yemen since 6 August, including 959 deaths. Nearly 200,000 people have been displaced inside the country. More than 3,000 have crossed into Djibouti. The Houthi-run health ministry says a woman was killed in an air strike on a farm in Sanhan, and a separate strike on a car in Sawan killed a girl and wounded seven other people.
So what don't we know? Whether Mocha has actually changed hands. The final toll from this round of fighting. Whether the Houthis will hit back harder or accept losing the coast. And nobody has said what troops or equipment Turkiye and Pakistan will actually send under the Mecca pact.
A war that looked like it was settling into a new Houthi-held chokepoint on the Red Sea is, right now, back up for grabs.
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