Houthis Strike Aden Airport; Saudi Downs Missile Near Riyadh — SkimNews
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- Yemen's Houthis fired at least two ballistic missiles and several drones at Aden International Airport's runway and passenger terminal; a Yemeni flight from Cairo was diverted to Jeddah after one missile struck near the runway minutes before landing.
- The Yemeni Ministry of Transport evacuated the terminal and removed two planes from the tarmac during the attack, warning the strike "could easily have turned a civilian flight into a horrific humanitarian disaster."
- The Houthis claimed in their own statement that they targeted "Saudi military supplies" arriving at the Badr camp near the airport — a military-target characterization that complicates the government's framing of the attack as against civilian infrastructure.
- The Saudi-led coalition intercepted a ballistic missile launched by the Houthis north of Riyadh, with spokesperson Major-General Turki al-Maliki saying the coalition was tracking the launch platform via intelligence over Sanaa and promised to destroy it.
- Saudi-backed government forces are battling to retake the Red Sea port of Mocha and strategic bases along the Bab al-Mandeb strait, with Al Jazeera reporting "all-out battles" concentrated in the mountains east of Mocha in Taiz province.
- Pakistan and Turkiye agreed Monday to activate "deterrence measures" under their mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and rapidly deploy forces to the Gulf kingdom to counter Houthi attacks — a regional escalation noted by Foreign Policy as the dominant angle.
Why it matters: The strike on Aden — the main international gateway for Yemen's internationally recognized government — shows the Houthis can hit deep into government-held territory while simultaneously projecting missiles toward Saudi Arabia's capital, forcing a Cairo flight to divert to Jeddah. Pakistan and Turkey's activation of mutual defense measures with Riyadh signals that a Houthi-Saudi exchange is now drawing in nuclear-armed and NATO-allied states, raising the stakes around the Bab al-Mandeb strait through which a significant share of global oil flows.
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