Saudi-led coalition strike Yemen's Hodeidah as Houthis kill five in shelling

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen launched air strikes Thursday on the northern coastal city of Hodeidah and other parts of Yemen, in its latest offensive following a Houthi attack on the UAE.

In a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency, the coalition announced that it had targeted a Houthi storage facility containing weapons that had been secretly transferred from the port of Hodeidah.

The coalition claimed Hodeidah had turned into a "military barracks that threaten regional and international security" under Houthi control.

The air strikes broke the Stockholm Agreement of 2018, which brokered a ceasefire for the Hodeidah governorate including the city and its ports.

Local eyewitnesses told The New Arab's Arabic-language service, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, that they saw flames rise from the targeted sites.

The coalition also announced that it had launched a widespread operation to neutralise Houthi capabilities in a number of Yemeni governorates.

The operation follows a Houthi attack on the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi on Monday that killed three people and wounded six. A Houthi military spokesman said the group fired "a large number" of drones and five ballistic missiles in the attack.

Coalition warplanes launched six raids around Sanaa's airport and separate raids on Houthi military targets elsewhere in the Yemeni capital, according to Houthi media.

In Yemen's southern province of Shabwa, Houthi shelling on Wednesday landed on a civilian fuel station killing five people and injuring several others, an anonymous government source told Chinese news agency Xinhua. Civilian infrastructure was also damaged.

Yemen has been mired in violence since the Iran=backed Houthis ousted the internationally-recognised government from Sanaa, prompting the Saudi-led coalition to intervene months later in March 2015 in a conflict often seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.