Yemeni government says it repelled a Houthi attack on the Morais front in al-Dhalea

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AL-DHALEA, Yemen — Yemeni government forces said they repelled a Houthi attack on the Morais front in al-Dhalea province on Wednesday and then counterattacked.

The account came in a statement from the Media Center of the Yemeni Armed Forces, which is aligned with the internationally recognised government.

The statement said troops thwarted the assault on military positions along the front line before striking Houthi sites in the same sector.

It gave no casualty figures. It did not describe the scale of the fighting, name a unit or a commanding officer, or say what either side lost.

It did not give a time for the attack.

Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of the engagement. The Houthis did not issue their own account of the fighting at Morais, and the group routinely disputes government claims of battlefield gains.

Al-Dhalea sits on the boundary between Houthi-held territory and Yemen’s southern governorates. Al Jazeera described the province on Thursday as a strategic gateway between the two.

A Houthi advance there could open a route for the group’s fighters toward other southern territory, according to that assessment. A Houthi setback would encourage government forces to push north toward Ibb, which the group holds.

The Morais sector is one of several contact lines separating the two sides in the province.

Al-Dhalea lies on the road linking Aden to Ibb and Sanaa. Traffic along that route has been interrupted during earlier rounds of the war.

The fighting in the province is part of a wider escalation that began on Sept. 3.

Heavy clashes broke out that day between the Houthis and forces loyal to the Presidential Leadership Council, Yemen’s internationally recognised authority. Al Jazeera reported that the fighting started with a Houthi offensive in Taiz governorate.

The government answered with a counteroffensive against Houthi positions in al-Jawf and al-Bayda.

Combat was concentrated at first west of Taiz and south of Hodeidah. It has since spread to al-Dhalea, Marib, al-Jawf and al-Bayda.

At least 194 people have been killed and 880 wounded in two weeks of fighting across Taiz, the western coast, al-Jawf, Marib and al-Dhalea, according to figures reported by Al Jazeera. The tally was not broken down by front.

Government forces carried out air strikes on Houthi targets on Sept. 7, Al Jazeera reported.

The ground fighting has run alongside an exchange of long-range attacks.

The Houthis struck civilian and energy sites in southern Saudi Arabia on Sept. 8, hitting Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran. The Saudi-led coalition said 73 people were wounded, among them women and children, and that operations at several energy facilities were disrupted.

Fires broke out at the sites. Saudi Aramco installations were among the targets named by the Houthi military spokesman.

The Houthis said those attacks were retaliation for a strike in al-Jawf that they said killed seven people. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of that account.

The Security Council held an emergency session on Yemen on Thursday. The UK and Bahrain requested it after the Sept. 8 attacks on Saudi territory.

UN special envoy Hans Grundberg told the Council that Yemen faces “a new and more dangerous phase of war,” and said his earlier warnings of a return to large-scale conflict had “now turned into a harsh reality.”

Grundberg said fighting had spread across Taiz, Hodeidah, Marib, al-Jawf and al-Bayda and had displaced more than 11,400 households since Sept. 3.

He said Houthi forces had taken the port city of Mokha, giving the group a presence on the shores of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Saudi Arabia and Yemen took part in the session under rule 37, which lets states that are not Council members join a discussion without a vote.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said this week that Saudi warplanes had carried out dozens of strikes on provinces the group controls. Saudi authorities have not addressed those figures, and Yemen Herald could not verify them.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Sept. 8 that the Houthis are “in many ways agents and proxies of the Iranians” and that “behind some of this is clearly the Iranian hand.”

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, rejected that account and said the Houthis act on their own.

The Houthis have held Sanaa since 2014. The government has operated from Aden since the following year.

Front lines across much of the country had been broadly static for long stretches before the current round of fighting.

Al-Dhalea has seen repeated combat over the past decade, and control of its northern districts has changed hands more than once.

Neither side’s claims from the province could be independently checked. Access for journalists to the front lines is restricted by both parties.

The March 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan put more than 22 million people in Yemen in need of assistance, 18.3 million of them acutely food insecure.

That plan counted more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely, and 5.2 million internally displaced people. The appeal sought $2.16 billion to reach 12 million people.

The government statement did not say whether the counterattack moved any positions.