YEMEN’S Houthi-led forces have captured more strategic islands in the southern Red Sea, its officials said today.

The capture of the islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish came as Saudi-backed government forces attempted to rally over the weekend and fight back after the rebels’ swift advances around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

The new gains by the Houthi-led forces tightens their control of shipping lanes through the Red Sea and allows them to threaten Saudi crude oil shipments.

The escalation in fighting between Saudi-backed forces and the Yemenis adds even more pressure to already soaring global oil supplies.

Houthi-led Yemeni troops were deployed on the Hanish islands 100 miles north of Bab el-Mandeb after hundreds of rival government-allied forces withdrew from the archipelago, according to sources.

The capture of the islands came after Houthi forces last week seized the port city of Mokha on the mainland nearby and the island of Mayun, located inside the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. 

The advances of the Houthi-led Yemeni forces also put them just 20 miles from the US military base in Djibouti, on the other side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

It’s the main US base in Africa and one of several foreign military bases in Djibouti, including those of China, France and Japan.

The advances by the Houthi-led Yemeni forces have met with little resistance from forces of the rival Saudi-backed forces — some units of which have been exposed as shells, with troop numbers well below official strength — and is pushing Yemen back into full-fledged civil war, after a truce that began in 2022.