Anees al Asbahi, a spokesperson for the Houthi-run Health Ministry, said in an X post on Tuesday that Saudi airstrikes killed three people, including two children, in Yemen's Taiz province. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify the claim.
Al-Asbahi said that two other people were wounded in the strikes.
The escalation comes as the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have seized the strategic islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish in the southern Red Sea, bolstering their ability to control a key maritime shipping route.
Iranian attacks have made passing through the Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas transits in peacetime — difficult and dangerous. The Saudis have since used the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which leads out of the Red Sea, for crude oil exports.
The Houthis’ latest seizures, which follow their capture of the Red Sea port of Mokha and a strategic island last week, puts more pressure on Saudi shipments and, in turn, global oil supplies and prices.
This could give Iran additional leverage in the war.
Rights group accuses Houthis of war crimes
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that at least three attacks by Houthi rebels against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden between July 20 and Aug. 24 could amount to war crimes.
The Houthi attacks against Saudi-linked shipping started in mid-July in the latest flare-up of violence in the Yemen civil war.
Niku Jafarnia, a Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that irrespective of any politics involved, “attacks on civilian crews carried out deliberately or recklessly are war crimes.”
The Houthis say their attacks on Saudi-linked shipping are retaliation for the Saudi-led coalition blockade on the Houthi-held areas in Yemen, a measure related to Yemen's decade-old civil war.
The rights organization said that the Houthis claimed to have attacked at least nine vessels over the span of a month, including two Saudi-flagged vessels, a Tanzania-flagged vessel and a Dominica-flagged vessel.
Human Rights Watch urged the Houthis to “immediately and unconditionally end all unlawful attacks on civilian ships.”
Oman tows ‘targeted’ oil tanker to port
Oman’s Maritime Security Center said Tuesday that a Panama-flagged oil tanker was towed to port in Oman after it was “targeted.”
The center said that a fire had broken out in the El Gaia tanker's engine room and 23 crew members have been evacuated. The search for two missing crew members was ongoing.
The vessel was targeted 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of the Musandam governorate.
U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, said in a post on X Monday that Iran had struck the tanker with a drone over the weekend as the ship sat off the coast of Oman. The tanker was rendered inoperable last month after being struck by an Iranian missile.
CENTCOM, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and is based in Tampa, Florida, said that Iranian claims that the El Gaia had recently struck a naval mine in the Strait of Hormuz were false.
Separately, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center, or UKMTO, reported Tuesday that a vessel was attacked by an unknown projectile within the Strait of Hormuz a day before. It said that no damage was reported, and it wasn't immediately clear if this was the El Gaia.
