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Claimed assaults come days after Houthis introduced naval embargo on Saudi vessels.
Printed On 22 Jul 2026
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have claimed an assault on two Saudi oil tankers transiting by the Crimson Sea.
“We focused two Saudi oil tankers, named ENCELA and LAYLIA, for his or her violation of the blockade determination issued by the armed forces,” Houthi army spokesperson Yahya Saree stated on Wednesday.
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Saree added that the assaults have been carried out, “utilizing a lot of ballistic and cruise missiles, in addition to drones”, and led to fires on the ships.
The Houthis had additionally compelled “almost ten ships… to desert their routes, and switch again”, Saree stated.
Saudi Arabia has not commented on the claims, however the UK Maritime Commerce Operations (UKMTO) centre stated it had obtained reports {that a} tanker has been struck.
“The grasp of a tanker experiences being struck by an unknown projectile which has prompted a hearth onboard that the crew are at present preventing,” UKMTO, which displays transport within the area, stated.
Yemen’s Houthi group, which has fought the Yemeni authorities and a Saudi-led coalition that backs it for greater than a decade, imposed a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia on July 20. That adopted a few of the worst violence Yemen has seen for 4 years, after the Yemeni authorities bombed the Houthi-controlled Sanaa airport to cease an Iranian airplane from touchdown.
The Houthis stated the declaration of the maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia was “primarily based on the equation of ‘a watch for a watch’ and affirmed “the precise of our nice folks to reply to the blockade with a blockade”.
The group, which seized Sanaa in 2014, accused Saudi leaders of imposing “an unjust and oppressive siege” for almost 12 years, “plundering our sources and imposing a complete blockade on our ports and airports by land, sea, and air”.
Riyadh has rejected claims that it was imposing a siege on the Yemeni folks, and the group’s critics level out that they’ve rejected a proposal from Jordan to renew flights between Amman and Sanaa.
Amid the disruption in transport by the Strait of Hormuz because of the US-Israel war on Iran, Saudi Arabia has been trying to facilitate oil circulate by alternative routes by the Crimson Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. However that route is now underneath menace from the Houthis.
The Houthis disrupted international commerce after they started attacking ships across the Bab al-Mandeb after the launch of Israel’s genocidal conflict on Gaza in October 2023. The assaults ended with the announcement of a “ceasefire” in Gaza in October 2025.
The Bab al-Mandeb chokepoint connecting the Crimson Sea to the Gulf of Aden is among the world’s most necessary transport routes, together with for oil exports.
Between Yemen to the northeast and Djibouti and Eritrea within the Horn of Africa to the southwest, the strait is simply 29km (18 miles) broad at its narrowest level, limiting visitors to 2 channels for inbound and outbound vessels utilizing the Suez Canal.
In 2024, about 4.1 billion barrels of crude oil and refined petroleum merchandise handed by the strait – about 5 % of the worldwide whole.
With the Strait of Hormuz successfully closed since Israel and the US launched their conflict on Iran in late February, shutting down Bab al-Mandeb as effectively may block 25 % of the world’s oil and fuel provide.
