Yemen’s internationally recognised government said on Saturday that its forces had attacked Houthi positions and military capabilities across several front lines, responding to deadly missile and drone strikes in Marib and Hadramout.

“This military action stems from the armed forces’ legitimate right to defend their security and personnel and to protect unarmed civilians,” military spokesman Colonel Majid al-Nuzaili said in a statement carried by the state-run Saba news agency.

The statement gave no precise targets, locations, timing, weapons used or assessment of the damage caused. The operation and its results could not be independently verified.

Al-Nuzaili said an attack on any government front would be treated as an attack on all its forces. He warned that further assaults would draw what he described as firm military measures.

The Houthis had not immediately commented on the government’s counter-operation. The group has acknowledged launching earlier missile and drone attacks on what it described as Saudi-backed military deployments in Marib and Hadramout.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had struck the Sahn al-Jinn camp in Marib, along with military positions in Hadramout. He claimed the attacks hit warehouses, vehicles and other equipment, but provided no independently verifiable evidence.

The Houthis said their attacks were a response to an alleged Saudi military build-up. That claim has not been independently confirmed.

Casualty figures from Thursday’s attacks differ sharply. Yemen’s Defence Ministry initially reported that 17 soldiers and officers had been killed. Government sources later told Reuters that at least 30 troops had been killed, while a Yemeni military source told AFP the toll was 58, most of them in Marib.

The discrepancies could not immediately be reconciled.

On Friday, Yemen’s government-run Health Ministry said Houthi fire killed two civilians and wounded 14 others after striking residential districts and displacement camps in Marib. The ministry described the figures as preliminary.

AFP, citing a military source, separately reported that eight government troops were killed and 12 wounded in renewed attacks on Friday.

The government’s National Defence Council held an emergency meeting in Riyadh under Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council. It ordered the military, security services and intelligence agencies to raise their readiness and strengthen coordination.

The council said it would remain in permanent session while monitoring attacks on military and civilian sites in Marib, Hadramout and Shabwa.

UN special envoy Hans Grundberg warned that Yemen faced its greatest risk of renewed large-scale conflict since a UN-brokered truce began in April 2022. He urged the parties to exercise maximum restraint and return to UN-led negotiations.

The Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention in support of the government the following year. The 2022 truce formally expired after six months, but large-scale ground fighting remained substantially reduced.

By Saturday morning, no independently verified assessment of the targets, damage or Houthi casualties from the government’s counter-operation was available.