ADEN, October 8, 2026 — Yemen’s internationally recognised government said on Thursday that its forces have “neutralised” 1,860 Houthi fighters since launching a large-scale counter-offensive dubbed “Dawn of Yemen” aimed at retaking all territory held by the Iran-backed rebel group, including the capital Sanaa.
The claim, published in a social media post by the spokesperson for the government’s armed forces early Thursday local time, said troops carried out 2,103 “precise targeting operations” against Houthi military positions across several fronts since the operation began.
The figures could not be independently verified, and Houthi outlets offered their own rival casualty claims, trade sources said.
A Week of Escalating Ground Fighting
Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, announced the offensive on Sunday, instructing the armed forces and security formations to begin carrying out their assigned tasks “until the country is liberated from the Houthis,” state media reported.
Fighting has been fiercest in western Yemen, where military sources from both camps told AFP that clashes on Wednesday left at least 62 combatants dead, including 37 Houthis. The government’s Saba news agency said a Houthi missile fired at the government-held city of Taiz wounded five civilians.
The Saudi-led coalition, which backs the Yemeni government, said its aircraft are providing air support for the operation, with the coalition spokesman telling reporters that the coalition has secured “air protection” over the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a vital energy shipping lane.
Bab al-Mandeb at the Centre of the Battle
Battles in recent days have concentrated around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the waterway linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, which has grown even more crucial for energy exports since the conflict between the United States and Iran restricted trade through the Strait of Hormuz, analysts said.
Government-aligned forces, including the Southern Giants Brigades and the Nation’s Shield Forces, said they seized Dhubab airport and cut the road linking Dhubab to Mokha, while hundreds of Houthi fighters were surrounded in the area and urged to surrender, military spokesmen said.
The Houthis seized Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline last month in the deadliest fighting in years, after the country’s civil war re-erupted in July following a four-year ceasefire, according to UN officials.
200,000 Displaced as Humanitarian Crisis Deepens
More than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes since renewed fighting broke out in recent weeks, the UN’s International Organization for Migration said on Wednesday, describing the situation as alarming.
The displacement figures have surged from about 76,000 in mid-September to more than 200,000, with nearly all of the newly displaced fleeing since early September, the agency reported. More than 3,700 people have also fled by sea to Djibouti.
“People are running for their lives and finding nowhere safe to go,” IOM Director General Amy Pope said in a statement, calling for increased funding amid soaring needs for food and shelter.
The UN World Food Programme has warned that three in four families in parts of Yemen are going hungry, while the World Health Organization said health services in the affected governorates are struggling to cope with mounting casualties, with critical gaps in frontline trauma care.
Both sides allege that hundreds have been killed in the fighting, without providing detailed evidence, according to aid officials tracking the conflict.
