← WW3 RISK TRACKER / THEATER: Yemen War & Houthi Attacks
Saudi – Houthis conflict
- Houthi forces fired six ballistic missiles into displacement camps and civilian infrastructure in Marib governorate.
- Missile strikes on Mokha port killed seven people, caused $16 million in damage, and forced the suspension of port operations.
- Yemeni government forces executed 181 operational strikes targeting Houthi positions across frontline sectors in Taiz and Marib.
- Fierce ground fighting and drone counter-strikes in Taiz governorate resulted in dozens of reported casualties on both sides.
- Escalating coastal and cross-frontline attacks heightened operational disruptions along the Red Sea near the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
Houthi forces launched coordinated missile and drone strikes against Mokha port and Marib governorate, forcing Mokha port to suspend operations. Yemeni government forces responded with 181 artillery and drone strikes against Houthi positions across Taiz and Marib.
Six Houthi ballistic missiles struck displacement sites in Marib, while strikes on Mokha port killed seven people and inflicted an estimated $16 million in physical damage. Government military units reported localized drone strikes in Taiz that killed three Houthi combatants alongside heavy ground engagements across central frontlines.
Diplomatic channels between the Presidential Leadership Council and Ansar Allah remain dormant following the October 2022 UN truce expiration. UN officials warned that active ground fighting in Marib and coastal strikes near the Bab el-Mandeb strait threaten to dismantle the remaining de-escalation baseline.
The targeted bombardment of Mokha directly disrupts commercial import routes and maritime transport feeding southwestern Yemen. Houthi strike patterns against coastal logistics hub facilities combine with persistent cross-border threat posturing toward Saudi Arabia to keep regional shipping lines exposed.
Renewed combat across coastal and central governorates demonstrates that post-truce restraint has yielded to active multi-front military operations. Assessment: The theater risks escalating into open multi-front offensive warfare if port bombardments and heavy frontline missile exchanges continue.
- 2026-08-15
Houthi strikes on Mokha port kill eight and shut down maritime operations
Houthi missile and drone strikes targeted Mokha port, killing eight people and forcing authorities to suspend all maritime operations.
- 2026-08-12
Houthi forces launch fatal Red Sea ship attack and sustain missile strikes on Mokha
A Houthi attack on a commercial vessel in the Red Sea killed six crew members, including three Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian. Concurrently, Houthi forces launched ten missiles and four drones targeting Yemen's western coast and Mokha port over four consecutive days.
- 2026-08-11
Fatal Houthi missile strike on commercial vessel near Bab el-Mandeb kills three crew members.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Is there a war in Yemen?
Not a declared war between states. The armed confrontation is between the Houthi movement and the Saudi-led coalition and the Yemeni government, and it reaches shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait. Fighting has continued through repeated truces without a settlement. Legally a non-international armed conflict — the Houthis against Yemen's government — internationalized by Saudi and Emirati involvement. The index reads 57/100 as of 1 January 1970 (active war); above 50 it grades the fighting itself rather than the risk of it.
How dangerous is the Saudi and Houthis situation right now?
The index reads 57/100 — active war. The scale is anchored on 22 historical episodes from 1914 to 2005, so the number means the same thing from one theater to the next. It is a measurement of what is reported, not a forecast.
How is the Saudi and Houthis risk index calculated?
By fixed formula from open-source reporting: events are extracted and graded by how well evidenced they are, scored across weighted factors, and the model never picks the number. How the index works, and what it does not measure, is explained at wwiii.report/methodology.
How often is this updated?
Every day. The report is rebuilt from that day's reporting and the index re-judged from it, and a fall is published only once the evidence confirms it.
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
One 0–100 scale for the whole conflict. 0–49 is escalation before war; 50–100 is active war and how far it has gone.
50 is not a threshold the number can cross on its own. Which side a theater sits on is decided by whether verified belligerents are fighting there, so war onset always moves the score up across 50 — the number never declares a war by climbing.
It is a stage, not a probability: 42 is not a 42% chance of war. Below 50 it grades movement toward war, above 50 the war itself.
Why it moved, under the chart, names what changed in the latest move: the day’s readings — strikes, casualties, talks — and, when the conflict’s stage was re-judged, what was graded differently and the events behind it. Open it for the detail.
Re-judged from open reporting by fixed formula — the model never picks a number — and a fall publishes only once the evidence confirms it. A dot on the line is a day the stage itself moved. How it is made →
Direction — which way the week pushed. Severity — where the index sits. Connections — how much of the rest a shock here reaches. Cascade — that reach combined with how ready this theater is to go off.
The index reads the state of the conflict, not the volume of news. Each run grades the factors listed below against fixed rubrics, and the score follows by formula.
So a dramatic headline moves nothing unless it changes a grade. A theater already graded for recurring incursions absorbs one more without moving — it is priced in.
Open How this was measured for every grade, its movement since the last run, and the events behind it. Full construction →
A different measurement from the score above, from a different source. This line counts how much of the world's news reports conflict between these two states, against their own long-run normal: 100 is normal, 200 is twice the usual level.
It is computed mechanically from the GDELT Project's open event stream every 15 minutes and never touches the assessed index above — when both move together, that agreement is the signal. A day with too few events shows no reading rather than a guess. Click the chart for the full history.
Data: the GDELT Project.