Houthi missiles strike Yemen's seat of government in Aden as truce collapses into war

Houthi forces fired a barrage of missiles at Yemen's presidential palace complex in Aden on Thursday, striking at the heart of the internationally recognized government for the first time since the country's civil war reignited this year. Yemen's information minister, Moammar al-Eryani, said five missiles were launched at the Al-Maashiq palace, which doubles as the seat of government and, by the Houthis' own account, a staging point for Saudi-led coalition forces.

Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani and his cabinet, who were inside the compound at the time, were not hurt, officials said, though two of his bodyguards were among the dead. The strike was followed a day later by a second attack near Aden's international airport, where two missiles landed close to a Yemenia Airways flight preparing to depart for Cairo. No one was hurt in that strike, but it was the second hit on the airport in under a week.

A disputed toll, a clear target

Accounts of the death toll from the palace strike have shifted and diverged by source. Yemeni government military sources initially put the figure at four killed and ten wounded; the country's health minister, Qasem Buhaibeh, later said at least five people had died and sixteen were wounded, a mix of palace guards and civilian staff. Earlier wire reporting had cited two guards killed. The National and other outlets note that the figures have not been reconciled into a single official count, a common pattern in a war where independent verification on the ground is scarce.

What is not in dispute is the target. The Houthi movement's military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said the group had struck what he called a Saudi-run military operations headquarters and weapons depots inside the palace grounds, a claim Reuters and other wire services said they could not independently verify. The government and the Saudi-led coalition have made no public comment on that specific claim. Houthi forces also said they fired ballistic missiles the same day at Marib, a city in Yemen's oil-producing interior still held by government forces.

How a four-year truce came apart

The attack is the sharpest marker yet of how completely Yemen's fighting has resumed since a truce brokered under UN auspices in 2022 broke down. That ceasefire had, by and large, held for roughly four years, even as formal negotiations stalled. Hostilities resumed in July, and by September the Houthis had launched an offensive along Yemen's Red Sea coast, seizing territory that gives them a firmer grip on approaches to the Bab al-Mandeb strait, one of the world's most strategically sensitive shipping chokepoints.

The internationally recognized government responded on October 4, when Rashad al-Alimi, head of the Presidential Leadership Council, announced "Operation Dawn of Yemen," a declared campaign to retake Houthi-held territory, including the capital, Sanaa, which the group has controlled since 2014. The Saudi-led coalition backing the government said roughly 100 aircraft took part in strikes connected to the operation — its first publicly acknowledged air campaign of that scale since the 2022 truce. Despite the counteroffensive, the Houthis have not been dislodged from the ground they took over the summer, and they continue to control most of Yemen's populous highlands.

The renewed war has unfolded against a wider regional backdrop: Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year has pushed Saudi Arabia to lean more heavily on Red Sea routes for its oil exports, raising the stakes of any Houthi threat to that corridor. The Houthis have declared a blockade against Saudi-linked shipping and have repeatedly targeted Saudi airports, oil infrastructure and aviation, a pattern of attacks the UN's aviation body, the International Civil Aviation Organization, has separately condemned.

A region reacting, a mediation offer in doubt

The Aden strike came five days after a Houthi missile attack on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport that killed twelve people and injured hundreds, by far the deadliest single strike of this phase of the conflict. UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned that attack in a formal statement issued from New York.

"Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are a violation of international law. These attacks must cease immediately."

Days before the palace strike, UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg briefed the Security Council, telling members that the country had slid back into what he described as full-scale war, according to reporting on the session. Two days after the Aden palace was hit, the Council issued a joint statement, delivered under the presidency of Greece's ambassador Evangelos Sekeris, condemning what it called "continued and escalatory" Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and affirming the kingdom's right to self-defense under international law. The statement also addressed Houthi threats to commercial shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

Individual governments issued their own condemnations in the days around the strikes. Turkey's foreign ministry said it condemned the attacks on Saudi airports "in the strongest terms" and called for the resolution of regional conflicts through dialogue, while Spain's foreign ministry urged a negotiated settlement under UN auspices and implementation of Security Council Resolution 2216, the measure underpinning the coalition's legal position in Yemen. Qatar's foreign ministry welcomed the Security Council's stance, and Canada's embassy in Riyadh separately condemned the palace attack and called for de-escalation.

Saudi Arabia's deputy minister for public diplomacy, Rayed Krimly, blamed Iran for encouraging the escalation and said the Houthis had rejected an offer of talks hosted by Oman. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, rejected any suggestion of Iranian direction over Houthi operations and said Tehran remained willing to mediate. The Houthi-run health ministry, for its part, reported 124 civilians killed and 327 wounded by what it called Saudi aggression since September 3, while Yemeni military command in Taiz put Houthi fighter losses at 168 killed and 210 wounded — figures from the warring parties themselves that outside observers have not been able to verify.

What happens next

In the days immediately following the palace strike, the Saudi-led coalition reported intercepting a cruise missile over the Medina region and a separate missile aimed at Yanbu, a Red Sea oil terminal, while saying it had destroyed ballistic missile launchers east of the northern Houthi stronghold of Saada. The Houthis denied targeting Medina specifically, noting they had pledged not to strike Islam's holy cities. Neither side has signaled a readiness to return to the negotiating table in the immediate term, and the government's monthlong counteroffensive has yet to reverse Houthi territorial gains along the coast. With the UN envoy warning of a slide into full-scale war and the Security Council limited to statements rather than enforcement measures, diplomats and aid officials expect the exchange of strikes on airports, palaces and oil infrastructure to continue, with implications for Red Sea shipping that extend well beyond Yemen's borders.