A Houthi attack on a government military camp in Shabwa kills at least 18, and American embassies across the Middle East issue security alerts

The war inside Yemen, which the missile exchanges with Saudi Arabia have pushed off the front page, produced the day deadliest single attack on Monday. At least 18 people were killed in a Houthi attack on a Yemeni government military training camp in Shabwa province, in the south of the country, four government and medical sources told Reuters, as of October 19. Reuters gave no breakdown of the dead between soldiers and others, and no Houthi statement on the camp attack was reported with it.

The attack sits inside a wider escalation that Washington spent Monday warning its own citizens about. American embassies and missions across the region issued coordinated security alerts overnight, covering Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and Jerusalem, Yemen and the virtual embassy for Iran. The alerts urge Americans to exercise heightened vigilance, say Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target American interests overseas, and flag the risk of flight cancellations, airspace closures and general travel disruption.

The air disruption is not hypothetical. Riyadh King Khalid International Airport reopened on October 18 after the Houthi strikes that closed it, but many international airlines have not resumed normal operations, and carriers including Air India and Air India Express have extended suspensions covering Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam until October 24, with Gulf airports in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and elsewhere reporting heavy delays and cancellations from broken aircraft rotations and crew schedules, as of October 19.

The Houthis have spent the month striking Saudi airports and oil facilities and taking Saudi strikes on their fuel depots in return, while building toward a missile of their own manufacture with a range that would cover the whole kingdom. A training camp in Shabwa is a different kind of target: the Yemeni government ground forces who are the Houthis oldest enemy, hit at the place where soldiers are made. Eighteen dead in one attack on a camp, in a war most of the world stopped counting, is the reminder that the regional war and the civil war are the same war.