Two Waves on Sunday Kill Eighteen at Al-Makha While the Houthis Say They Were Aiming at Saudis

Yemeni government military spokesman Colonel Majid Abdullah al-Nuzaili said in a Monday statement, carried by ANI, that a Houthi missile and drone barrage on al-Makha on Sunday evening killed at least seven people, three of them civilians, and injured 30, striking staff residential facilities, offices, power-generation stations and military positions. An earlier wave the same day killed 11 — eight military personnel and three civilians — and wounded 32, per a toll cited by AFP and carried by Al Jazeera. Houthi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree called it a “large-scale and high-quality military operation” and said the targets were Saudi military forces, mobilisations and weapons depots, framing it as a response to a Saudi buildup along Yemen’s western coast and in Taiz. Houthi political council member Hizam al-Assad said the continuing fires and smoke at the port came from stored weapons. NBC reported at least 30 government troops killed in two provinces the previous day, sourced to unnamed government sources.

The maritime half of the same campaign is aimed at the kingdom’s cargo, not Iran’s adversaries at Hormuz. FDD’s Long War Journal, an advocacy-aligned outlet whose figure is a tally of Houthi claims rather than of verified strikes, counted attacks claimed on eight Saudi-linked vessels since the group declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia on 20 July. Bloomberg reported on 5 August that the Houthis said they would attack Saudi oil tankers in the northern Red Sea, with Saree citing the kingdom’s diversion of ships south of Bab al-Mandeb and announcing an operation against the tanker Wafa. Windward’s daily intelligence file records three Chinese-linked vessels, one fully Chinese-owned, transiting Bab el-Mandeb southbound within a 24-hour window on 7 August immediately after calling at Jeddah.

Assessment: The significant move is definitional. By naming al-Makha a Saudi target set, Sanaa converts strikes on Yemeni port infrastructure and Yemeni troops into a front in a war with Riyadh — a framing the government answers with a casualty list that is mostly civilian and municipal. Both accounts come from parties to the fighting; neither the stored-weapons claim nor the residential-damage claim has independent confirmation, and the 30 dead troops rest on one unnamed government sourcing. The Chinese transits after Jeddah calls are the useful tell: a blockade advertised as total is being applied selectively, which is what makes it a pricing instrument rather than a closure.