Yemeni government forces clashed with Houthi fighters near the Saudi border, with AFP footage showing soldiers in armoured vehicles and trucks pushing across desert terrain under the crackle of machine-gun fire.

The Houthis also released footage on Wednesday of the fighting in the Al-Jawf area, as well as a video purporting to show the downing of a fighter jet belonging to Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni government’s main backer.

“The First Division Emergency Forces are advancing on the Al-Labanat front and, God willing, will reach Houthi positions,” Waleed Al-Mahajeri, operations commander of the government’s Fifth Brigade, told an embedded AFP journalist on Tuesday.

He went on to claim that the “Houthi militias are retreating and fleeing across all fronts”.

AFP footage showed the soldiers firing heavy machine guns, artillery and RPGs at distant targets, as well as the bodies of Houthi fighters and entrenchments the government forces said the group had abandoned as they fell back.

“Al-Masariya Hill has been liberated, as has Al-Labanat camp, and the advance is continuing towards Al-Tebab al-Soud,” said soldier Abu Mithaq.

Yemen’s civil war roared back to life in July after lying mostly dormant since 2022, with the Houthis making rapid advances that saw them seize the entirety of the country’s Red Sea coast and strategic islands in the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the sea’s southern tip.

The group has long held large parts of the country’s north, including the capital Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government have scrambled to respond to the new offensive, and Saudi airstrikes have failed to roll back the Houthis’ gains.

In their own video, Houthi fighters can be seen racing across the desert in pick-up trucks, at one point firing on an advancing vehicle.

“We are conducting now, God willing, an operation to… cut off the enemy,” one of the fighters can be heard saying.

A separate video issued by the group includes night-vision footage appearing to show a projectile striking a fighter jet.

Other scenes show the wreckage of a downed plane, with a charred tailfin bearing the Saudi flag.

The Houthis said on Wednesday that they had shot down a Saudi fighter jet using a locally made missile.

Earlier today, the Saudi-led coalition accused the Houthi rebels of targeting the holy city of Makkah, sparking outrage across the Muslim world and deepening the conflict roiling the region.

The Houthis swiftly rejected as a “lie” Riyadh’s report that it shot down a drone from the rebels heading towards Makkah, which attracts millions of pilgrims each year.

“The claims about targeting Makkah are a worn-out lie that has been used before and no longer fools anyone,” Hazem al-Assad from the Houthis’ politburo wrote on X.