LIVE BLOG: Saudi and Arab allies bomb Houthi positions in Yemen

The Yemen Times has details on the neighborhood in Sanaa struck by the Saudi-led airstrikes:

Al-Wadhahi, a residential neighborhood in the capital Sana'a, was severely damaged by air strikes in the early hours of March 26. The neighborhood is located next to Sana'a International Airport. The bodies of the dead were taken away in the middle of the night. Locals told the Yemen Times that two families, a total of six to eight people, were killed, and eight houses were destroyed. More bodies are feared to be hidden under the rubble.

Four Egyptian warships have entered the Suez Canal en route to the Gulf of Aden.

According to AFP, Egyptian canal officials said that the ships will take part in operations "to secure" the strategic waters that control southern access to the Suez Canal.

There has been fear that the Houthis might gain access to the Bab al-Mandab strait, a vital corridor through which much of the world’s maritime trade passes.

Egypt is one ten nations including Sudan that pledged military support for the Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis.

Speaking from his home in Sanaa, Hisham Omeisy, a political analyst, told Middle East Eye that the Saudi-led airstrikes risked driving previously anti-Houthi Yemenis into the arms of the militia.

"We're not anti-Houthi anymore," said Omeisy, whose family has fled to a relative's home on the outskirts of Sanaa.

"Remember this is a Yemeni paradigm where the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We do not like Gulfies striking Yemen. We don't take kindly to foreign forces hitting Yemen, no matter what the case is."

Footage broadcast on the Houthis' al-Masira channel shows people pulling handbags, clothes and mattresses out of the rubble and children laid out in hospital beds. Medics say the death toll has reached 15 and includes civilians and a well-known doctor.

Protesters in the central city of Taiz, one of the last pockets of resistance to the Houthi advance, are celebrating the GCC coalition's airstrikes:

Saudi Arabia has suspended international and domestic flights at seven airports in the south of the country, according to Reuters.

This is not the first time Saudi Arabia has bombed the Houthis in Yemen. As Brian Whitaker explains in a blog post the Kingdom has a long and messy history with the Shiite rebel group from Yemen's north.

Almost constantly since its foundation in 1932, Saudi Arabia has been involved in Yemen politically, and sometimes militarily – often with negative consequences for Yemen

In the most recent episode of fighting (2009-10), which the government called Operation Scorched Earth, the conflict became internationalised when Saudi Arabia carried out bombing raids in Yemen with President Saleh's blessing. 

Details are still obscure because journalists and aid workers were not allowed into the area but that thousands were killed or injured and an estimated 350,000 were forced to leave their homes.

Saudi interests are best served by keeping Yemen “on the wobble” (as one western diplomat put it) – though not so wobbly that regional stability is jeopardised. Before the unification of north and south Yemen in 1990, this amounted to ensuring that both parts of the country focused their attentions on each other rather than on their non-Yemeni neighbours.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif has slammed the military intervention in Yemen as violation of the country's sovereignty.

"The Saudi-led air strikes should stop immediately and it is against Yemen's sovereignty," the Students News Agency quoted Zarif as saying.

"We will make all efforts to control crisis in Yemen," Zarif said.

According to Al-Arabiya, Saudi Arabia, along with 9 other countries, launched a military operation against Houthi rebels in Yemen. All six Gulf states, with the exeption of Oman, are providing military support. 

MEE's latest infographic shows the minimal extent of government control:

Witnesses in Sanaa told MEE that four or five houses near Sanaa airport had been hit. Rescue workers put the death toll from the air strikes at 25, including a doctor who had been pulled from the rubble of a damaged clinic.

Analysts from the geopolitical intelligence firm Statfor unpack the conflict. "There isn't a possibility of imposing a new reality using military force, they (the Saudis) would have to go in and fight on the ground."

Iranian state television is broadcasting footage of some of the damage, showing dozens of bodies and some wounded people, saying "many Yemeni citizens were killed in the U.S.-backed aggressions in Yemen".

Iran denies providing money and training to the Shiite Houthi militia in Yemen as claimed by some Western and Yemeni officials.