Mediator Qatar said on Tuesday that the United States and Iran were still talking to end the Middle East war, despite an apparent deadlock seven months into the conflict. Foreign ministry official Ibrahim Al-Hashmi told a regular briefing that the indirect talks take account of "the concerns of the various parties".
"I can confirm that the talks are continuing and the exchange of messages between different parties is continuing via Qatar and its regional partners," he said. "As you know, the scale of this conflict and the magnitude of the price that the whole world is paying require us to put our best efforts to end this immediately through a negotiable solution on the negotiation table," he added.
Also on Tuesday, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met Iran's interior minister, Eskandar Momeni, in Doha, the royal palace said. Despite a ceasefire in April, a memorandum of understanding in June and talks at the United Nations General Assembly last month, Washington and Tehran remain at odds over the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
On Monday, President Masoud Pezeshkian said talks with the United States were "meaningless" and only brought renewed attacks, state media reported. Yemen's Houthis claimed an attack on the Saudi capital's main airport and on Tuesday denied being pushed back by government forces, who have launched a major operation to retake lost ground.
Yemen's military said it had removed the pro-Iran group from areas around the Bab al-Mandab strait, a Red Sea chokepoint, and from the port city of Mocha. Claims by both sides could not be verified independently.
The ground is moving quickly and journalists have little access. Sources on both sides were cited as Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group still held all territory seized last month, when they swept coastal areas along the Red Sea, a vital global shipping route.
"Have full control over all their advances on the ground," he posted on Telegram, of the Houthi fighters. Saree said they carried out dozens of strikes in the past few hours on government forces in Al-Jawf and Marib, and also attacked Taiz.
The Houthis' health ministry said on Tuesday that a Saudi airstrike killed six members of one family, including four children, in a village in Hajjah governorate on the Saudi border. On Monday the Houthis said they struck Riyadh airport and a refinery belonging to Saudi state oil company Aramco.
Loud explosions shook the capital that evening, and residents said another explosion on Tuesday echoed through the northern parts of the city. King Khalid International Airport is facing frequent temporary closures of its airspace, tracking website Flightradar24 said.
Saudi authorities have not publicly acknowledged the closures or confirmed any strikes on the facility. The civil aviation authority said on Tuesday that at least three people were wounded a day earlier in attacks on Jazan and Najran airports, near the Yemen border.
Saudi Arabia, the main backer of the Yemeni government, is giving air support to the government counter-offensive. Government forces claimed late on Monday that they had "victories on several fronts".
Military sources would not confirm Mocha's recapture, saying only that the one supply route to the area had been cut. They said the Houthis had been pushed out of several areas of Taiz, in the southwest, where fighting has surged in recent days.
The Saudi-led coalition said on Tuesday it intercepted a ballistic missile fired by the Iran-backed group toward the southwest of the kingdom. Spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki said on X that the missile, aimed at Khamis Mushait, home to an airbase, was "intercepted and destroyed".
Video posted by Yemeni government forces showed them driving armoured cars over opposing fighters as they recaptured areas around the Bab al-Mandab strait from the Iran-backed Houthis on Monday, in a deadly new phase of the fragmented country's war. The videos gave a glimpse of the brutal closing stages of a pitched battle for territory near the strait that the Houthis had captured last month.
Some of those overrun were armed and some were walking or running. Others were unarmed.
Some sat, lay or crouched on the sandy shore and did not move as the vehicle ran over them. At one point the vehicle hits a running, unarmed man and another man crouching.
It then turns back and drives over two men with their hands up, both unarmed. Gunfire is heard, and a shot cracks the windscreen.
A Houthi statement called the videos proof of war crimes. A spokesperson for the Giants Brigade, the main government force at Bab al-Mandab this week, did not immediately comment.
Oman carried out a medical evacuation of 10 crew members of the Panama-flagged oil tanker On Peace, which was attacked near the Gulf country, the media office of the sultanate's armed forces said on Tuesday.