Pakistan Air Force F-16 fighter jet Photo by Pakistan Air Force fighter jet
Pakistan Air Force fighter jets are being used in strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a senior Pakistani military official told The New York Times, the first indication from inside Pakistan’s military that its air force has joined Saudi Arabia’s renewed war against the Iran-backed group.
A second Pakistani official told the newspaper that Pakistan’s role is expected to focus on degrading Houthi drone and missile threats through air support, and not on a ground offensive in Yemen. Neither official said how many aircraft are involved, which targets have been hit, when the strikes began or whether the jets are striking inside Yemeni territory, and Pakistan’s military declined to comment.
Col. David O. Smith, a former U.S. Army attaché in Pakistan and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, told the Times that analysts broadly estimate about 8,000 Pakistani troops have deployed to Saudi Arabia, including Pakistan Air Force and Army air defense units. He said they would likely help protect oil infrastructure and were unlikely to fight the Houthis directly, given Islamabad’s effort to preserve its relationship with neighboring Iran.
The report follows Monday’s decision by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey to activate the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, a mutual defense pact the three countries signed on Aug. 7. At an emergency meeting in Riyadh, they agreed to put collective deterrence measures into effect and rapidly deploy Pakistani and Turkish forces to the kingdom, the first time the pact had been invoked. Hours later, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said Pakistani forces were already playing a part, although when reporters asked him on Sept. 30 whether Pakistani forces had joined strikes in Yemen, he did not answer directly.
Pakistan’s military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, confirmed this week that Pakistani troops are stationed in Saudi Arabia but declined to say whether they would operate across the border in Yemen, telling CNN that any involvement would be defensive in nature.
Over the past several days, Saudi Arabia said Houthi missile and drone strikes on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and Abha International Airport in the south killed three people, two women at Abha and a Sudanese man at King Khalid, and injured 36. The Saudi-led coalition said it retaliated by hitting dozens of Houthi military sites in Yemen, including missile storage sites and command centers, and on Thursday residents of Riyadh reported hearing several explosions whose cause was not immediately clear.
The Houthis declared a blockade of the Red Sea in July and attacked shipping there, then seized Yemen’s Red Sea coast in a rapid offensive last month, routing Saudi-backed government forces. The Saudi-led coalition says 100 fighter jets are now supporting a counteroffensive by Yemen’s internationally recognized government to retake that territory, and a United Nations agency said nearly 200,000 people have been displaced in Yemen since early September.
Islamabad has long kept its distance from the Yemen war: in 2015, when Saudi Arabia launched its original campaign against the Houthis and asked Pakistan for jets, ships and troops, Pakistan’s parliament voted to stay neutral. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday it hoped reports of a Pakistani deployment for the war in Yemen were untrue.
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a separate bilateral mutual defense agreement in September 2025, declaring an attack on either country an attack on both, and the Mecca pact extended that commitment to Turkey, whose parliament has not yet ratified it.