Saudi Arabia has launched strikes on Yemen’s Houthi-held city of Hodeidah, the group’s Foreign Ministry has said, in the latest escalation of the conflict amid the regional war between the United States and Iran.

The ministry warned that the attack late on Friday will prove costly for Riyadh, suggesting that the group will respond to the strikes.

“By targeting Hodeidah, the Saudi regime has made ‘escalation for escalation’ the defining feature of the coming phase,” said the Foreign Ministry.

The Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV said the strikes targeted facilities belonging to the telecommunications authority. The outlet also reported strikes in Kamaran Island.

So far, one woman is known to be injured from the attack on Kamaran Island, according to Al Masirah TV.

Explosions were also seen at Hodeidah’s port, the Reuters news agency reported witnesses as saying, though the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen has denied targeting the port.

The port city of Hodeidah is a crucial lifeline for the parts of Yemen under Houthi control. The city’s port handles the bulk of commercial and humanitarian imports into Houthi-controlled northern Yemen.

Major-General Turki al-Maliki, the official spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, blamed the Houthis for the escalation, calling the group’s attacks on Red Sea shipping “cowardly and reckless”.

The Saudi-led coalition will continue to “take all necessary operational actions and measures”, al-Maliki said in a statement, adding that if the Houthis continue their “hostile acts”, a response will be “carried out without hesitation”.

On Wednesday, the Houthis – also known as Ansar Allah – announced that it had targeted several Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea with drones and missiles, damaging at least one. They said the ships had broken the blockade announced two days earlier.

The Houthi blockade, announced on July 20, was framed by leaders as an “eye for an eye” response to a strike on Sanaa’s international airport a week earlier, which the group blamed on Saudi Arabia.

The internationally recognised government, which is backed by Riyadh, had taken responsibility for the attack on the airport, saying that it was over the unauthorised arrival of an Iranian plane.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said at the time that the attack had ended a “de-escalation phase” the two sides had maintained since an informal truce took hold in 2022.

Although never formalised, the truce had held for four years and was the longest lull in hostilities since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 in support of the government.

While the Houthis enforced a blockade on shipping in the Red Sea during the height of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the group has stayed largely out of the US-Iran war.

The tit-for-tat strikes between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, though, risk further escalation in the region and additional global economic fallout if Red Sea shipping is disrupted. The Strait of Hormuz, another major artery for the global energy trade, is already largely blocked by Iran.

The Red Sea is a critical global shipping route, handling roughly 30 percent of all sea container traffic.

Yemen’s Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdul Salam said earlier on Friday that the group is not blocking the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which links the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

“The announced Yemeni position … is limited to a naval blockade targeting only the Saudi side in response to its siege of Yemen and its refusal to accept any fair approach to a solution that guarantees the security, sovereignty and independence of the Yemeni people,” Abdul Salam said in a social media post.