At least 97 combatants have been killed in Yemen since Monday evening, mostly in fighting near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, AFP reported on Tuesday, describing the clashes as the fiercest since Ansarullah — the Houthi movement — captured most of Yemen's Red Sea coast from government forces last month.

Source: AFP via Foreign Exchanges

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Tuesday they had repelled an advance by forces they described as Saudi-backed from the southern direction of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Reuters reported. The Houthis said they targeted the advancing forces with ballistic missiles and heavy weapons, causing large numbers of casualties, and destroyed several military vehicles. There was no immediate Saudi confirmation of the Houthi account, and the casualty figures in this report are attributed to AFP's reporting and to the parties' own statements, not independently verified.

Source: Reuters via Devdiscourse

Ansarullah also accused pro-government forces of killing at least two people near the heavily embattled city of Taiz, AFP reported. That accusation is reported here as a claim by one side in the war; no independent confirmation was available in the reports reviewed.

The Bab al-Mandeb Strait, at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, is one of the world's most important shipping passages, linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and onward to the Suez Canal route. Fighting around the strait matters well beyond Yemen: it affects the safety of commercial shipping, energy supplies and the large number of Indian and Punjabi workers in Gulf countries whose remittances and travel routes depend on a stable Red Sea corridor.

What happens next will depend on whether the fighting near the strait spreads or eases. No ceasefire announcement accompanied Tuesday's reports, and neither side's claims about battlefield gains could be independently confirmed at the time of publication.