The Houthi movement takes the southern Red Sea coast and reaches Bab el-Mandeb

What happened

The Houthi movement takes the port of Mokha, about 75 kilometres north of Bab el-Mandeb, at dawn on 10 September, and over the following day Dhubab some 46 kilometres further south, the coastal villages beyond it, Perim (Mayyun) island in the strait and Zuqar in the Hanish group — the last government-held stretch of Yemen's Red Sea coast. Reporting describes the result as the whole of that coastline passing into Houthi hands; independent verification of a control line has not been read. The Presidential Leadership Council's vice chairman, Tareq Saleh, says he ordered a strategic retreat and the formation of an alternative command centre to regroup the forces in consultation with the Arab coalition command. Reporting places a remaining government force, put by one account at more than two thousand, on the Hanish islands. The movement claims six districts and 5,400 square kilometres. A Houthi politburo member states that navigation and trade in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb are safe and orderly and that the exception remains Saudi shipping; a Houthi commander says that with the fall of Mokha the strait can be considered under the movement's administration. Al Jazeera reported no official Houthi announcement of control over the strait.

PHYSICAL ACCESS TO THE STRAIT CHANGED HANDS; PASSAGE THROUGH IT DID NOT CLOSE, and this module keeps the two apart. Bab el-Mandeb has the Djiboutian and Eritrean shores opposite, and the wider of its two channels lies west of Perim. What the advance establishes is presence on the Yemeni side of the outlet that Saudi Arabia's east–west pipeline delivers to. What it does not establish is interdiction: no independently observed interference with non-Saudi shipping from the new positions has been read, and reporting of a sharp fall in transits on 10 September is a change in what shipowners chose to do, not evidence of an act against a vessel. FOUR THINGS STAY APART IN THIS RECORD: a stated intention to retake the ground, which government field commanders have expressed; operational preparation, which the vice chairman's regroup order is; a counteroffensive, which has not been reported; and a territorial reversal, of which none is established.

Confidence: Moderate