Deadly attacks on government military camps in Hadramout and Marib mark the fiercest military escalation in Yemen since 2022.
Yemen’s Houthi group has killed at least 30 government soldiers and injured 15 others in missile attacks on Yemeni military camps in the governorates of Hadramout and Marib, government sources told Al Jazeera.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the attacks, using missiles and drones, led to “hundreds” of casualties.
The Yemeni military confirmed the strikes, framing them as a response to their own attacks on the Houthis.
Yemeni military sources said that the Houthis fired eight missiles from al-Jawf governorate, north of Marib, targeting al-Thiniya and al-Abr in Hadramout and al-Rouk in Marib.
Deadly attacks on government military camps in Hadramout and Marib mark the fiercest military escalation in Yemen since 2022.
Yemen’s Houthi group has killed at least 30 government soldiers and injured 15 others in missile attacks on Yemeni military camps in the governorates of Hadramout and Marib, government sources told Al Jazeera.
Thursday’s strikes on military sites, including some run by Yemen’s Emergency Forces, are the deadliest in years in the country’s civil war. They follow an increase in violence in Yemen seen in recent weeks.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the attacks, using missiles and drones, led to “hundreds” of casualties.
The Yemeni military confirmed the strikes, framing them as a response to their own attacks on the Houthis.
Yemeni military sources said that the Houthis fired eight missiles from al-Jawf governorate, north of Marib, targeting al-Thiniya and al-Abr in Hadramout and al-Rouk in Marib. The sources said casualty numbers were expected to rise.
Al Jazeera’s Yemen affairs editor, Ahmed al-Shalafi, reported that the attack struck at 2pm local time (11:00 GMT) on Thursday, hitting camps belonging to several government military formations, the Homeland Shield Forces, the Emergency Forces and the First Military Region in Hadramout.
The Homeland Shield Forces, formed in 2022 with Saudi backing and numbering tens of thousands, guard the Marib-Hadramout frontier and the Saudi border. The formation fought the Southern Transitional Council forces earlier this year.
The Emergency Forces, created by presidential decree in late 2025 under Saudi-led coalition supervision, secure the land borders and anti-Houthi fronts in al-Jawf and Hadramout. The First Emergency Division Command said casualties were high because troops had gathered for a morning training exercise.
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Fighting in Yemen between the Iran-allied Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces has intensified in recent weeks, after four years of relative calm.
The US embassy in Yemen described the attacks as “cowardly”. In a post on X, the US mission paid condolences to the families of “brave Yemeni soldiers killed today”.
The attacks “represent yet another example of terrorism against Yemeni people”, it said.
Separately, the Saudi-led coalition said a Houthi attack on the border Saudi city of Najran injured 11 civilians, including a woman and a child.
“The terrorist Houthi militia carried out terrorist attacks using indiscriminate projectiles against civilian objects, constituting a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,” the coalition’s spokesperson Turki al-Maliki said in a statement.
The Houthis did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack.
The Houthis announced a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia in July and have attacked ships linked to Yemen’s northern neighbour.
Yemen’s latest war began in 2014, when the Houthis took over the Yemeni capital Sanaa. A military intervention from a Saudi-led coalition began the following year, but it has been unable to fully defeat the Houthis.
Increased attacks
Saree said that Thursday’s attack followed “military build-ups” by Saudi-backed government forces, “aimed at escalating the conflict”.
He issued a statement later, warning pro-government fighters to flee: “We advise those misled and deceived among our people to leave the Saudi enemy camps and return to their homes before it is too late.”
In a post on X, Abdul Malik al-Mekhlafi, deputy chairman of the Yemeni Consultation and Reconciliation Authority, said Houthis have resorted to targeting Yemen’s government positions due to intensifying pressure on the group.
“This is their true project: perpetuating the war and preventing the restoration of the state,” he said.
Both the Houthis and the government have mobilised their forces in recent weeks, with clashes in western and central Yemen.
Tensions increased a month ago when the Houthis said that an Iranian plane had been prevented from landing at Sanaa airport. On July 13, the Yemeni government said that forces hit Sanaa airport to prevent another Iranian plane from landing. The Houthis responded by launching an attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport, which Riyadh said was intercepted.
The Houthis then announced their maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia on July 20 and began attacking Saudi-linked ships in the Red Sea in the following days.
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The attacks in one of the world’s busiest shipping routes came as the United States-Israel war on Iran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, further disrupting oil and energy exports from the region.
The Saudi-led coalition has since launched strikes on Houthi targets in western Yemen, its first since 2022.
The Houthis have justified their blockade as a response to the “Saudi siege” on areas of Yemen under their control.
