Yemen has not known stability for years, as the country witnessed great famine, wars and continuous battles since the attacks of Al-Qaeda in the nineties until the civil war raging between the legitimate government, led by Abd Rabbo Mahmoud Hadi, and the Houthi group.
The two sides have regional connections. While a Saudi-led coalition supports the Yemeni government, the Houthi group receives its support from Iran.
Fighting is currently intensifying around Marib, one of the last major sanctuaries for government forces in the north of the country The Wall Street Journal Saudi Arabia and its allies are struggling to support the government to preserve its territory.
The Saudi-led coalition carried out nearly 700 airstrikes in February, according to the Yemen Data Project, a nonprofit organization that tracks the war in Yemen.
This would make this the most intense period of bombing since 2018, the paper says.
In the past four months, more than 1,500 Yemeni civilians have been killed or injured, up from 823 in the previous four months, according to the Civilian Impact Monitoring Project, which collects information on the war for the United Nations.
The organization said that the air strikes of the Saudi coalition were responsible for the vast majority of casualties.
Saudi officials say the main goal of the airstrikes is to push the Houthis back and hurt them enough that they feel compelled to negotiate an end to the war.
Peace talks have been stalled for months as the Houthis try to seize Marib.
The United States and the United Nations have urged Saudi Arabia to ease the air strikes. But officials in Riyadh and Yemen say they intend to hit the Houthis harder.
The Houthis responded to the Saudi and Emirati moves by launching missile and drone strikes targeting the Gulf states.
They also fired more missiles at Ma’rib.
The escalating violence comes seven years following Saudi Arabia and a small group of allies launched a bombing campaign that Riyadh said would take only a few weeks to eliminate Houthi fighters who seized the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in a post-Arab Spring conflict.
Instead, the war has continued and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with the United Nations estimating that more than 377,000 people have died as a result of the war, 70% of whom are children.
The war in Yemen has also given Iran an opportunity to turn the well-armed Houthi fighters into one of Tehran’s most skilled hard-line allies.
The Houthis can now launch advanced drones and long-range missiles capable of striking the capitals of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates more than 800 miles away.
While Saudi-backed fighters say they have made some gains in recent weeks, the Houthis still control the country’s capital and much of the northern highlands, while the divided Yemeni government and its allies maintain tenuous control in the south and east.
And if the Houthis take Marib, that would give them effective control of all of northern Yemen, along with oil money they might use to continue funding their fight.
The newspaper quoted a senior Saudi official as saying, “If they control Marib, we will lose the war and we will lose security and stability in the region.
Officials in Marib, once a thriving oil-rich outpost, said more than two million people have sought refuge in the city, nearly 60% of the 3.5 million displaced.
The United States and Saudi Arabia accused Iran of providing the Houthis with weapons, advisors, and support, which they used to build and launch an expanded array of drones and missiles targeting Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and ships off the Yemeni coast.
Iran is one of the few countries that has diplomatic relations with the Houthis, but denies supplying them with weapons.
