The Yemeni Armed Forces said it targeted the Encelia and the Layla with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones after accusing both of violating the blockade, claiming large fires broke out on each vessel. UKMTO logged a strike on only one tanker, reporting the master of a vessel struck by an unknown projectile roughly 70 nautical miles southwest of Al Shuqaiq, Saudi Arabia, causing a fire the crew was actively fighting; it reported no casualties and no environmental impact. Security consultancy Vanguard Tech confirmed the Encelia was hit on her starboard side, and Saudi state media confirmed the strike on the vessel without commenting on the Layla. The Layla’s AIS signal had been dark for several days before the reported attack, and her position and condition remain unconfirmed.   Equasis records identify the Encelia as a 109,250 dwt, Saudi-flagged product tanker built in 2003, commercially managed by Jeddah’s Bihar International, with Dubai’s Red Sea Marine Services handling ISM management and Liberia’s Trans Mediterranean Shipping as registered owner. The Layla is listed as a 317,821 dwt VLCC built in 2007, owned and managed by Bahri, Saudi Arabia’s National Shipping Company, through its Dubai arm Bahri Ship Management.

Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree declared the Bab el-Mandeb strait fully closed to Saudi-flagged tankers going forward, and said the strikes had already forced around ten vessels to retreat rather than risk transiting the area. He described the campaign as a “blockade for blockade” strategy, framed as retaliation for Saudi support of the US military campaign in the region. In a separate statement, Yemen’s Armed Forces warned that any military action against Yemen would draw “extensive operations deep inside Saudi territory,” explicitly naming oil refineries as potential targets, extending the threat from shipping lanes to onshore energy infrastructure that underpins the kingdom’s export economy.

The escalation lands alongside a parallel threat in Hormuz. President Trump said Wednesday the US would “bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT” every time Iran fires on a ship in the strait, including targets “in the Capital City of Tehran.” Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran’s “defence doctrine is clear: eye for an eye,” while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had stopped three oil tankers from transiting Hormuz, warning that “any ship that is deceived by the US and intends to pass without coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran will suffer the same fate.” US Central Command reported a twelfth consecutive night of strikes on Iranian targets beginning Wednesday evening, aimed at degrading “Iran’s ability to threaten civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting regional waters.”   Should Trump follow through and strike Iranian infrastructure in response to a further Hormuz attack, Tehran’s own stated doctrine points to immediate retaliation, compounding a risk already building around the Houthis’ Red Sea campaign and raising the prospect of both of the Middle East’s critical oil chokepoints facing simultaneous disruption. Tehran has briefed the Houthis to up their ship attacks if Iranian infrastructure is hit by US forces.     “Middle East risk has become a two-chokepoint problem,” Standard Chartered analysts including Emily Ashford wrote. “The cost of moving barrels is likely to increase while the risk persists.”   Shipping analysts at SEB, a Scandinavian bank, noted yesterday prior to Wednesday’s attacks: “As Iran has shown at Hormuz, closing a corridor does not require the resources to physically stop shipping. It requires enough credible threat to make transits uninsurable. The Houthis have that, and the effect is already visible. Laden tankers reversed course on a warning alone, before any attack. Insurance appetite, not enforcement capacity, is the binding constraint.”