Airstrikes Return to Sanaa: Saudi-Led Coalition's 'Operation Dawn' Pushes Civilians Back Into the War

With the support of the Saudi-led coalition, Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, recently announced the launch of "Yemen Dawn Operation," in an attempt to recapture the capital Sanaa, which has been under Houthi control since September 2014. According to Al Jazeera reports, since the offensive began, airstrikes on Sanaa have killed at least three civilians, plunging this city — which had been relatively calm since the 2023 ceasefire — back into panic.

Monday's airstrike on the Sawwan area of Sanaa governorate killed one child and wounded seven other civilians; a previous strike on Sanaa International Airport killed two workers. Yemeni government forces remain bogged down in ground fighting along the western coast and around Taiz, still hundreds of kilometers from Sanaa. This means that any advance on targets inside Houthi-controlled territory can only be carried out from the air — and the line between airstrike targets and urban residential areas has never been clear.

For many Sanaa residents, this scene is not unfamiliar. The "Decisive Storm" operation launched by the Saudi-led coalition in March 2015 dropped a massive number of bombs over Sanaa, killing hundreds of civilians and drawing international condemnation. Gamdan Aboud, a 30-year-old courier, told Al Jazeera: "When I learned of the new operation on Sunday, my sense of security shrank. Airstrikes can come anywhere, anytime, and civilians may be the next casualties." He pointed out that Houthi military installations are believed to be located within the city itself, noting that "these facilities may be near residential areas, farmland, or roads. So innocent people may be killed, injured, or scared out of their wits."

Escalating alongside the airstrikes are Houthi strikes on targets inside Saudi Arabia. On Saturday, the Houthis attacked King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 12 people. The Saudi-led coalition subsequently stated that Sanaa, Saada, and Amran are the main sources of Houthi missile threats, and claimed that the ongoing military operations are aimed at weakening the group's ability to launch missiles into Saudi territory. However, when airstrikes are the only means available and the targets struck are difficult to separate from civilian areas, it is still ordinary residents who bear the most direct impact.

The scale of displacement is rapidly expanding. International Organization for Migration data indicates that since the Yemen conflict escalated in recent days, more than 200,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, mainly from the southwestern Taiz governorate — where ground fighting between government forces and the Houthis is most intense. Saleh al-Aydi, a 50-year-old Sanaa resident and father of five, told Al Jazeera: "Today we think of Sanaa as a place far from the front lines. But for me, there is no safe place in Yemen; war could spread everywhere." He recalled that at the start of the 2015 conflict, his family was forced to leave Sanaa and move to the outskirts for six months.

A wave of panic-buying has reappeared in Sanaa. Nashwan, a 24-year-old grocery store owner, is stockpiling rice, cheese, milk, biscuits, cooking oil, and sugar, and has set aside 100 liters of gasoline for his minibus in anticipation of a possible fuel crisis. He told Al Jazeera: "These goods may become more expensive in the coming days. If the war continues to escalate, it'll cost more to buy them. I don't want to immediately bear the impact of the war." Wafiq Saleh, executive director of the Yemen-Gulf Center for Studies and Research in Taiz, told Al Jazeera: "Rising food and fuel prices are a concrete concern for all the public during wartime and will further worsen Yemen's humanitarian situation."

Last week, the UN World Food Programme warned that three-quarters of families in parts of Yemen are going hungry and described the country's food situation as "absolutely devastating." If Houthi-controlled areas face further shrinkage in imports due to the Saudi maritime blockade and ground fighting, the extent of the rise in food and fuel prices remains difficult to estimate.

Many observers are skeptical about whether this operation can truly recapture Sanaa. Laiman Hamdani, a London-based Yemeni analyst, told Al Jazeera that the government forces are "large on paper, but spread across multiple fronts and poorly equipped," and "can hold their lines but cannot drive the Houthis out of their mountain strongholds." Fuad Ali, a 40-year-old university graduate, said the Saudi-backed government "can't even take the flatter terrain of Hodeidah and Al-Jawf governorates — how could it recapture mountainous Sanaa?" He warned: "Yemen Dawn Operation will bring more destruction to state infrastructure and increase civilian casualties."

Ali remains cautiously optimistic that this operation will not damage Sanaa as severely as in 2015 — and that very restraint is itself a memory of the civilian lessons of "Decisive Storm."