Saudi-led coalition strike on Yemen’s Mukalla port sparks rift with UAE and emergency measures

The charred hulks of armored vehicles still sat in a tight cluster along Mukalla’s quay on Tuesday, their metal frames twisted and blackened beside idle cranes and silent warehouses.

Just hours earlier, in the early morning of Dec. 30, warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition struck the eastern Yemeni port, hitting what Saudi Arabia described as weapons and military vehicles that had just been unloaded from ships arriving from the United Arab Emirates.

Within a single news cycle, Yemen’s internationally recognized government declared a state of emergency, ordered a sweeping, temporary shutdown of its borders and canceled its defense pact with the UAE. Abu Dhabi, for its part, announced it was ending the mission of its remaining counterterrorism forces in Yemen and pulling them out.

The airstrike, the emergency measures and the Emirati withdrawal marked one of the sharpest ruptures in the Arab coalition that has fought Yemen’s Houthi movement since 2015, exposing deep disagreements between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over how the war should end and who should control Yemen’s south and east.

A “limited” strike on an ally’s port

Coalition spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki said the operation at Mukalla targeted “weapons and combat vehicles” offloaded from two ships that had sailed from the UAE’s port of Fujairah and docked in the Hadramout governorate without coalition approval.

He said the vessels “disabled their tracking systems and offloaded a large quantity of weapons and combat vehicles to support the Southern Transitional Council’s forces,” in reference to a powerful separatist group that seeks an independent southern state.

“Given the danger and escalation posed by these weapons, which threaten security and stability, the Coalition Air Forces conducted a limited military operation this morning,” al-Maliki said in a statement carried by Saudi state media.

The coalition said it first issued public warnings telling civilians, fishermen and armed personnel to evacuate the port and its approaches, then carried out a precision strike aimed at the parked vehicles. It said there were no casualties and no damage to port infrastructure. Independent casualty figures were not immediately available, and aid agencies had yet to report on any disruption to operations.

Analysts and shipping data have identified one of the vessels involved as the Greenland, a roll-on/roll-off cargo ship flagged in St. Kitts and Nevis that left Fujairah around Dec. 22 and arrived in Mukalla late in the month. Videos that circulated on social media in the days before the strike showed lines of new armored vehicles moving through the city.

UAE denial and a contested shipment

The UAE has rejected Saudi Arabia’s account of the shipment and the strike.

In a statement, the Emirati Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it “categorically rejects any attempt to implicate the state in tensions among Yemeni parties” and “strongly denounces allegations that it exerted pressure on, or issued directives to, any Yemeni party to undertake military operations that would undermine the security of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

The ministry said the cargo “did not include any weapons,” and that the vehicles were not intended for any Yemeni faction.

“The shipment concerned did not include any weapons, and the vehicles unloaded were not intended for any Yemeni party, but were shipped for use by UAE forces operating in Yemen,” the statement said.

It added that there had been “high-level co-ordination” with Saudi Arabia, including an understanding that the vehicles would not leave the port, and said Abu Dhabi was “surprised by the targeting of the vehicles at the port of Mukalla.”

In a separate announcement, the UAE Ministry of Defence said it was terminating the mission of its remaining specialized counterterrorism personnel in Yemen “of its own volition,” arguing that recent developments had affected “the safety and effectiveness” of those operations. Emirati forces, it said, had already drawn down the bulk of their presence in Yemen in 2019.

The conflicting narratives leave key questions unanswered, including whether weapons were in fact part of the cargo and at what point coordination between the two Gulf allies broke down.

Yemen’s government declares emergency, breaks with Abu Dhabi

The strike triggered a swift and far-reaching response from Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, the Saudi-backed authority that is recognized internationally as the country’s government.

In a televised address, council chairman Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi announced a 90-day state of emergency “in all territories of the republic” starting Dec. 30. He also ordered a 72-hour halt to air, sea and land traffic through ports, airports and border crossings in areas controlled by his government, except for movements authorized by the coalition.

Al-Alimi accused the UAE of stoking internal conflict by backing the Southern Transitional Council (STC), whose forces in early December seized much of Hadramout and the neighboring al-Mahra governorate from other pro-government units.

He said Abu Dhabi had been “pressuring and directing the STC to undermine and rebel against the authority of the state through military escalation,” and that its support had “fueled internal strife in Yemen.”

The president said Yemen was canceling its defense cooperation pact with the UAE and ordered all Emirati forces to leave the country. Saudi officials publicly backed that demand, with state media quoting them as saying that Saudi Arabia’s national security was a “red line.”

Al-Alimi also instructed all military formations in Hadramout and al-Mahra to coordinate with the coalition and hand over their positions to Saudi-aligned units — a move aimed at rolling back recent STC gains.

A separatist ally under fire

The STC, created in 2017 and long supported by the UAE, has emerged as the dominant power in much of Yemen’s south and east, including the interim capital Aden and parts of Shabwa, Abyan, Lahij, Hadramout, al-Mahra and the Socotra archipelago.

Its stated goal is to restore a separate southern state along the lines of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which merged with the north in 1990.

STC-aligned media condemned the Mukalla strike as an “unjustified escalation against ports and civilian infrastructure” and said it would strengthen popular calls for a “South Arabian state.” The group has rejected Saudi calls to withdraw from Hadramout and al-Mahra, framing its advance there as protecting southern interests and security.

The episode highlighted the contradictions inside Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, which was set up in 2022 as a fragile power-sharing body that includes Al-Alimi and STC leader Aidarous al-Zoubaidi, among others. The decision to cancel the defense pact with the UAE and demand an Emirati exit risks deepening splits within the council.

A coalition under strain

Saudi Arabia and the UAE entered Yemen’s war together in March 2015, leading a coalition that intervened after the Iran-aligned Houthi movement seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north.

Over time, however, their approaches have diverged. Riyadh has continued to back a unified Yemeni state and is particularly sensitive about control of border governorates like Hadramout and al-Mahra, which contain oil reserves and potential transit routes.

The UAE has focused on building influence along the southern coast and key ports and islands, backing local forces such as the STC, the Security Belt and the Giants Brigades. The same Emirati-supported Hadrami Elite forces that helped drive al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula out of Mukalla in 2016 now find themselves in the middle of a confrontation between their two main sponsors.

The Mukalla strike is unusual not only because it involved coalition aircraft attacking a port under the nominal control of a friendly government, but also because it targeted assets that one coalition member says were its own.

Saudi officials have justified the operation by citing U.N. Security Council Resolution 2216, which imposed a targeted arms embargo in 2015 and authorized inspections of cargo bound for Yemen suspected of carrying prohibited weapons. Legal experts note that the resolution is primarily aimed at Houthi-aligned actors, and the coalition’s broader claim that any external military support to Yemeni factions without its approval violates the measure is contested.

Risks for civilians and regional security

For residents of Mukalla and eastern Yemen, the immediate concern is less the legal basis for the strike than its impact on already precarious livelihoods.

The port, opened in the 1980s, is the main commercial gateway for eastern Yemen, handling food, fuel, building materials and fish exports. Any perception of insecurity, even if physical damage is limited, can raise shipping and insurance costs, disrupt aid deliveries and push up prices in a region where many households already struggle to afford basic goods.

Yemen’s broader humanitarian crisis remains among the world’s worst, with millions in need of assistance and crisis-level or worse food insecurity reported in both Houthi- and government-held areas. Aid agencies have warned that new front lines or restrictions on ports and borders can quickly translate into empty shelves.

Security analysts also warn that the UAE’s withdrawal of its remaining counterterrorism units, combined with potential infighting between Saudi-aligned forces and STC units, could create openings for al-Qaida or Islamic State-linked cells to regroup in parts of Hadramout and nearby valleys where they have previously operated.

For the Houthi movement, which was not directly involved in the Mukalla incident, the turmoil among its opponents may offer an opportunity. A fractured anti-Houthi camp could complicate any attempts to revive stalled peace talks and may allow the group to hold out for more favorable terms.

As the burned vehicles at Mukalla’s quayside cool, the strike that destroyed them has left a different kind of wreckage: an Arab coalition that now appears as divided over Yemen’s future as the country it set out to stabilize. Whether Riyadh and Abu Dhabi can repair their partnership — and whether Yemen’s rival factions can avoid a new phase of conflict in the south and east — will shape not only the next chapter of the war, but also the security of sea lanes and borders stretching from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Oman.