Last week, American media reported that US President Donald Trump had rejected a personal request from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, to intervene in the war.

The Saudi crown prince received the commander of the US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, in Jeddah on Monday to discuss “the latest developments in the region”, according to Saudi news agency SPA.

The US admiral travelled to Saudi Arabia on Thursday for urgent coordination meetings, according to US news site Axios.

The Houthis, whose heartland is among Yemen’s Zaidi Muslims in the country’s north, seized the capital Sanaa in 2014 at the outset of the civil war, driving the government to Aden in the south.

The following year, Saudi Arabia led a coalition to intervene on the side of the government, launching wave after wave of airstrikes as the conflict escalated into one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

In 2025, the United Nations warned that 17 million Yemenis were struggling to eat and a further million faced extreme hunger.

On Sunday, the UN’s migration agency said the renewed fighting in the Arab world’s poorest country had forced 86,000 people to flee their homes, with the number jumping by 10,000 in just a day.

More than 2,000 people had fled across the Bab el-Mandeb to reach Djibouti in Africa, the International Organization for Migration said.