MARIB, Yemen — The Houthis launched eight ballistic missiles toward Marib on Sunday, a city that is home to a large population of displaced people, according to a Marib governorate statement posted on Facebook and reported by Anadolu Agency. It was not the first such attack, since Houthi missiles struck Marib in August as well. The city remains under the control of Yemen’s internationally recognised government.
The same day, Yemen’s armed forces published a count of their own. In a statement on Operation “Dawn of Yemen,” the military spokesperson said forces carried out 1,326 strikes on Houthi targets over 24 hours and that about 370 Houthi fighters had been “neutralized,” Arab News reported. On the eastern front west of Marib, the statement said, government forces had advanced toward designated targets with aircraft and drones in support.
The figure comes with its own caveat. The military described the 370 as a preliminary assessment, and the Arab News account carries no Houthi response and cites no count from outside the fighting. That matters because the numbers the government has published since the offensive began do not line up with one another.
Al Jazeera reported on October 8 that the military said it had “neutralised” 1,860 Houthi fighters since the counteroffensive began, after 2,103 “precise targeting operations.” A later Al Jazeera report quoted spokesman Colonel Majid al-Nuzaili as announcing 1,879 precise strikes and 950 fighters neutralised on October 12. The later total is lower than the earlier one, and the second report does not say what period it covers. Arab News’s own post on X on Friday gave more than 1,200 strikes and 430 Houthi militia members eliminated, again with no stated period.
On the Bab al-Mandab front, a government military official told Xinhua on Sunday that units of the Giants Brigades and Nation Shield Forces had launched a fresh offensive, calling the fighting “among the fiercest we have seen in the area.” The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said extensive minefields had complicated the advance and that the Houthis had used fiberoptic-guided first-person-view kamikaze drones known as “Shawaz.” Several people on both sides were killed or wounded, the official said, without giving figures, and Xinhua noted that the outcome was unclear, with no confirmation of significant territorial gains.
Civilians are carrying the cost. TEH reported on Wednesday that Taiz is running out of flour, and Al Jazeera, citing the International Organization for Migration, now puts displacement at more than 233,000 people since fighting escalated, about 121,000 of them in Taiz governorate. The World Health Organization has warned that Taiz city has become functionally isolated, Al Jazeera added, with its 12 hospitals holding fuel for only four days.
Anadolu’s report of the governorate statement names no impact site and no casualty figure. Whether any of the eight missiles hit anything in a city that is home to so many displaced people is a question none of Sunday’s reports answers.
