Live Updates: Diesel hits record $6 a gallon as, reports say, Houthis take key Red Sea port city

President Trump rejected pleas from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to strike the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, news website Axios reported Thursday. 

The Houthi rebels launched a major offensive against Saudi-backed government forces last week, killing hundreds. Several outlets quoted sources Thursday as saying they had taken the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha. 

Saudi Arabia has hit Houthi forces with dozens of airstrikes in recent days, with the latest hitting an airport in the strategic port city of Mokha, Houthi media reported Friday.

Citing two anonymous U.S. officials, Axios reported that the crown prince called Mr. Trump twice on Thursday – in the first call warning him about the deteriorating military situation in Yemen, and in the second urging him to strike the Houthis. 

The president declined, but Washington will provide the Saudis with intelligence and targeting data on the Houthis, a U.S. official told Axios, while more than 200 U.S. military personnel are already in Saudi Arabia providing "non-kinetic support."

Houthi control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and is a vital global energy chokepoint, would be a major point of leverage for their allies Iran. 

Control of Mokha would make it easier for the Houthis to target Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, which they have been doing for weeks.

Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes since fighting escalated in Yemen last week, the United Nations said Friday, with the number more than doubling in a matter of days.

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have for years controlled large parts of northern Yemen, launched a large-scale offensive last week against Saudi-backed government forces, scoring one victory after another in fighting that has left hundreds dead.

Since the fighting escalated, "at least 46,000 people have been displaced," the International Organization for Migration said in a statement, warning that "the number is alarmingly rising by the hour."

On Tuesday, the U.N. agency had put the number at around 18,500.

The announcement came after the Houthis seized control of the strategic Red Sea port city of Mocha on Thursday, according to sources speaking to the AFP, Associated Press and Reuters news agencies, before seizing a key island in the middle of the Bab al-Mandab Strait on Friday.

Saudi Arabia responded with dozens of airstrikes, with the latest two hitting the Mocha airport, Houthi media reported on Friday.

The displacements had happened across the west coast and Taiz areas, the IOM said, also pointing to reports of large numbers of people seen leaving Mocha with their belongings overnight to Friday.

The agency said people also seemed to be moving north.

"Entire villages are reported to have emptied" to the west of Taiz, it said, adding that the Mocha-Taiz road, a key supply route, had reportedly been cut.

IOM chief Amy Pope warned that "as fighting spreads, reaching people with lifesaving assistance is becoming harder."

"We urgently need safe, unimpeded access," she said in the statement.

"All parties must protect civilians and humanitarian workers, and safeguard the supplies, vehicles and facilities we depend on to deliver help."

CBS/AFP

Saudi airstrikes hit the rebel-held Mokha airport in Yemen on Friday, an Iranian-backed Houthi broadcaster reported, a day after the Houthis entered the key port city on the Red Sea, bringing them closer to the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Their advance further threatens commercial shipping on an important alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier Friday, Iran's government called for an end to Saudi Arabia's blockade of Yemen, throwing its support behind its ally, the Houthis. In its first statement since the rebels entered the port, Iran's Foreign Ministry also called for a return to negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.

The rebels' capture of Mokha, overlooking tanker routes out of the Red Sea, could boost Iran's strategy of driving up world oil and gas prices to pressure the United States, experts say. It also raises concerns of a new front opening after more than six months of war in the region - one in which Saudi Arabia is forced to respond.

Experts say the developments in Yemen could give Tehran more leverage in any negotiations with the United States. On Wednesday, the spokesperson for Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard called for any negotiated settlement with the U.S. to include Yemen, the first explicit reference to that front.

Iran's government on Friday called for an end to Saudi Arabia's blockade of Yemen and the immediate resumption of talks, in its first public statement since Iran-backed Houthi rebels entered a key Yemeni port – according to sources speaking to the AP, AFP and Reuters news agencies – and intensified their threat to a key global shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, Iran's foreign ministry said Yemen's sovereignty must be respected and its problems cannot be resolved through a blockade or military alliances.

Iran also said it was ready to help support negotiations. Meanwhile, experts say the developments in Yemen could give Tehran more leverage in any negotiations with the United States after over six months of war.

The Houthis' entry into the Red Sea port of Mokha on Thursday brings them within 50 miles of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, an important alternative for global shipping as Iran targets vessels on the Strait of Hormuz. It's the rebels' biggest territorial gain in years.

CBS/AP

Yemen's special envoy to the United Nations called on support from the international community after the Iran-backed Houthi militant group seized control of the Red Sea port city of Mokha.

"This renewed war should alarm us all," Hans Grundberg, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, warned at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.

"It effectively marks the end of the relative calm that Yemen has experienced for over four years since the U.N.-brokered truce," Grundberg said.

He called on the international community to address this "new and more dangerous phase – one whose consequences, if left unchecked, will not stay within Yemen's borders."

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have entered Yemen's strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha, two local residents told The Associated Press on Thursday.

A Yemeni military source told the AFP news agency earlier on Thursday that the Houthis had taken the city. Four government military sources made the same assertion to the Reuters news agency.

Yemen's U.N. Ambassador Abdullah Al-Saadi said a single Yemen state with a monopoly on weapons that has sovereignty throughout the country, which the government is seeking, is "a fundamental guarantee" for security for Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the region.

He called on the Security Council to condemn the Houthis' military escalation and to implement measures "prohibiting the supply of arms, components, technology, and military expertise to the militia" which are fueling the conflict.

Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdulaziz Alwasil said that the kingdom remains supportive of peace in Yemen but that it would "take all measures necessary to deter Houthi attacks."

Alwasil warned that "the kingdom's commitment to de-escalation and to supporting a political solution must not be allowed to become an opportunity that this militia exploits to continue its attacks and to threaten the security of the kingdom and the region."

CBS/AP

Diesel prices in the U.S. have passed a painful new milestone for the transportation industry: $6 a gallon, a surge experts said is likely to have ripple effects for consumers as businesses pass on their higher energy costs.

The national average for a gallon of diesel rose to a record $6.05 on Thursday, up more than 60% from $3.71 a year ago, according to data from AAA. Diesel is widely used in trucking and rail, affecting the cost of transporting goods around the U.S., as well as in construction and farming. 

Diesel had already surpassed $6, according to GasBuddy, which tracks changes in gas prices in real time.

Read more here.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Thursday that its navy targeted a U.S. unmanned surface vessel in the Strait of Hormuz.

"The Navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted a Saildrone Explorer-type unmanned surface vessel in the Strait of Hormuz area," the guard said in a statement carried by its Sepah news outlet under the headline "Destruction of a US Saildrone in the Strait of Hormuz."

The ideological arm of the Iranian military added that the sea drone had been used in the region by the U.S. Fifth Fleet stationed in Bahrain.

Washington has previously used Saildrone Explorer USVs to gather data and images in the Gulf. The sea drones are driven by solar and wind energy and can be deployed on missions in the ocean for up to one year.

This isn't the first time Iran has seized a U.S. Saildrone Explorer. In September 2022, Iran seized multiple drones, but  later released them at the United States' request.

Iran on Wednesday said it captured an unmanned U.S. submarine drone, providing video of the drone being pulled out of the water. The U.S. military said one of its underwater drones had "malfunctioned."

CBS/AFP