At least 27 people killed in strike near Yemen's capital, Houthi official says

At least 27 people have been killed and 36 others wounded, mostly women and children, after airstrikes hit homes in a village near Yemen's capital, Sanaa, a spokesman for Yemen's Houthi-run health ministry said.

Anees Alasbahi, speaking to The Associated Press, accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out the strikes on the village of al-Shariya.

Yemen's civil war has been rapidly intensifying after a years-long truce collapsed over the summer.

Fighting has escalated between the Iranian-backed Houthis - who control Sanaa, the north and the west of the country - and their Saudi-backed opponents, based in the south and east.

On Friday, an airstrike in a market in southern Yemen killed at least 30 people, Houthi officials said. The Houthis and Yemen's Saudi-backed military blamed each other for that strike.

The renewal of fighting has raised fears that Yemen will again be plunged into the horrors of a civil war that has dragged on for more than a decade, creating one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.

The Saudi-led coalition supporting Yemen's government said on Friday that it had intercepted and destroyed a drone in the region of Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

On Saturday morning, the Saudi civil defence issued an alert of potential danger in Jizan, a city on the southwest coast.

Around midday on Saturday (UK time), the Saudi civil defence sent an alert of a potential threat in Najran, a nearby city.

Saudi Arabia has been locked in worsening hostilities with the Houthis since July, when the wider Middle East conflict reignited the Yemen war, and Riyadh has since sought ‌both defensive and offensive support from a range of allies.

Reuters reported on Friday, citing two Syrian military sources and a senior US official, that Syria had sent a limited number of military personnel to Saudi Arabia in recent weeks to provide military advice and training amid Houthi attacks on the kingdom.

But Syria has no plans to send troops to Yemen, ‌a Syrian diplomatic source told state news agency SANA, dismissing reports of a possible deployment while ‌adding that military cooperation with Riyadh could eventually expand.

Meanwhile, the Iranian military said on Saturday that a tanker east of the Strait of Hormuz had hit a naval mine and caught fire.

It did not identify the nationality or destination of the tanker, which it said had turned off its navigational beacon and was sailing in a "prohibited area".

The Iran war has come into focus this week after a bruising midterm elections for the Republicans that saw the party lose control of both chambers of Congress, with the conflict widely considered to be a major factor in the shift.

But US president Donald Trump, speaking to Sky's Dominic Waghorn after the Republicans lost the House majority, tried to strike a positive tone.

"We are doing very well with Iran. We're talking to Iran," he said.

"We haven't lost a soldier in seven months or six months. We have the most straight opening, doing more business than they've ever done with oil."

(c) Sky News 2026: At least 27 people killed in strike near Yemen's capital, Houthi official says