{"id":211024,"date":"2025-12-30T07:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T07:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/211024\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T07:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T07:38:07","slug":"saudi-arabia-bombs-yemen-over-weapons-shipment-it-claims-uae-sent-to-separatists-yemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/211024\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia bombs Yemen over weapons shipment it claims UAE sent to separatists | Yemen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen\u2019s port city of Mukalla on Tuesday over what it described as a shipment of weapons for a separatist force there that arrived from the United Arab Emirates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The UAE did not immediately acknowledge the strike.<\/p>\n

The attack signals a new escalation in tensions between the kingdom and the separatist forces of the Southern Transitional Council, which is backed by the Emirates. It also further strains ties between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which had been backing competing sides in Yemen\u2019s decade-long war against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels amid a moment of unease across the wider Red Sea region.<\/p>\n

A military statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the strikes, which it said came after ships arrived there from Fujairah, a port city on the UAE\u2019s eastern coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ships\u2019 crew had the disabled tracking devices aboard the vessels, and unloaded a large amount of weapons and combat vehicles in support of the Southern Transitional Council\u2019s forces,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsidering that the aforementioned weapons constitute an imminent threat, and an escalation that threatens peace and stability, the Coalition Air Force has conducted this morning a limited airstrike that targeted weapons and military vehicles offloaded from the two vessels in Mukalla.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t immediately clear if there were any casualties from the strike or if any other military besides Saudi Arabia\u2019s took part. The Saudi military said it conducted the attack overnight to make sure \u201cno collateral damage occurred\u201d.<\/p>\n

The UAE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Council\u2019s AIC satellite news channel acknowledged the strikes, without providing details.<\/p>\n

The attack likely targeted a ship identified by analysts as the Greenland, a roll-on, roll-off vessel flagged out of St Kitts. Tracking data showed the vessel had been in Fujairah on 22 December and arrived in Mukalla on Sunday. The second vessel could not be immediately identified.<\/p>\n

Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert and the founder of the Basha Report, a risk advisory firm, cited social media videos that purported to show new armoured vehicles rolling through Mukalla after the ship\u2019s arrival. The ship\u2019s owners, based in Dubai, could not be immediately reached.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect a calibrated escalation from both sides. The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council is likely to respond by consolidating control,\u201d al-Basha said. \u201cAt the same time, the flow of weapons from the UAE to the STC is set to be curtailed following the port attack, particularly as Saudi Arabia controls the airspace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Footage later aired by Saudi state television, which appeared to be filmed by a surveillance aircraft, purportedly showed the armoured vehicles moving through Mukalla to a staging area. The types of vehicles corresponded to the social media footage.<\/p>\n

Mukalla is in Yemen\u2019s Hadramout governorate, which the council had seized in recent days. The port city is 480km north-east of Aden, which has been the seat of power for anti-Houthi forces in Yemen after the rebels seized the capital, Sana\u2019a, in 2014.<\/p>\n

The strike in Mukalla comes after Saudi Arabia targeted the council in airstrikes<\/a> on Friday that analysts described as a warning for the separatists to halt their advance and leave the governorates of Hadramout and Mahra.<\/p>\n

The council had pushed out forces there affiliated with the Saudi-backed National Shield Forces, another group in the coalition fighting the Houthis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those aligned with the council have increasingly flown the flag of South Yemen, which was a separate country from 1967 to 1990. Demonstrators have been rallying for days to support political forces calling for South Yemen to secede again<\/a> from Yemen.<\/p>\n

The actions by the separatists have put pressure on the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which maintain close relations and are members of the Opec oil cartel but also have competed for influence and international business in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen\u2019s port city of Mukalla on Tuesday over what it described as a shipment of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-211024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}