The United States and Britain struck 36 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday in a second wave of strikes aimed at further disabling Iran-backed groups that have relentlessly attacked American and international interests in the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The latest attacks against the Houthis were launched from warships and fighter planes. The strikes follow an airstrike in Iraq and Syria on Friday that targeted other Iran-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for the drone attack that killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan last weekend.
The Houthi targets were located in 13 different locations and were struck by U.S. F/A-18 fighter jets from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS Gravely and USS Carney Navy destroyers firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea. officials told The Associated Press. They were not authorized to discuss the military operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The United States has warned that its response following the deaths of soldiers at the Tower 22 base in Jordan last Sunday will not be limited to one night, one target or one group. But the Houthis have conducted almost daily missile or drone attacks on commercial and military vessels transiting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and have made clear they have no intention of scaling back their campaign. It was not immediately clear whether Allied attacks would deter them.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the military action, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand, “sends a clear message to the Houthis that they will continue to face further consequences if they they will not end their illegal attacks on international naval vessels and vessels.”
He added: “We will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways.”
The Defense Department said the strikes targeted sites associated with the Houthis’ deeply buried weapons storage facilities, missile and launcher systems, air defense systems and radars.
Saturday’s attacks marked the third time the United States and Britain have conducted a major joint operation to target Houthi weapons launchers, radar sites and drones. The attacks in Yemen are intended to underline the broader message sent to Iran that Washington holds Tehran responsible for arming, funding and training the array of militias behind attacks across the Middle East against U.S. and international interests in recent months, also in Iraq and Syria by rebels in Yemen.
Video shared online by people in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, included the sound of explosions, and at least one explosion was seen lighting up the night sky. Residents described the explosions as occurring around buildings associated with the Yemeni presidential complex. The Houthi-controlled state news agency SABA reported strikes in al-Bayda, Dhamar, Hajjah, Hodeida, Taiz and Sanaa provinces
The American destroyer Laboon and Eisenhower F/A-18s shot down seven drones launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen in the Red Sea on Friday, the destroyer Carney shot down a drone fired in the Gulf of Aden and American forces shot down four others drones ready to launch.
Hours before the latest joint operation, the United States carried out another self-defense strike at a site in Yemen, destroying six anti-ship cruise missiles, as it has done repeatedly when it detected a missile or drone ready to launch.
Houthi attacks have led shipping companies to divert their ships from the Red Sea, sending them around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, a much longer, more expensive and less efficient passage. The threats have also led the United States and its allies to establish a joint mission in which warships from participating nations provide a protective air defense umbrella for ships as they navigate the critical waterway from the Suez Canal to to the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. .
During normal operations, approximately 400 commercial vessels transit the southern Red Sea at any time.
The United States blamed the attack on Jordan on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iranian-backed militias. Iran has sought to distance itself from the drone attack, saying the militias act independently of its direction.
Hussein al-Mosawi, spokesman for Harakat al-Nujaba, a major Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, condemned the previous U.S. attack in Iraq and said Washington “must understand that every action elicits a reaction.” But in the AP interview in Baghdad, he also struck a more conciliatory tone. “We do not wish to intensify or broaden regional tensions,” he said.
Mosawi said the targeted sites in Iraq were mostly “devoid of fighters and military personnel at the time of the attack.”
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 23 people, all grassroots fighters, had been killed. Iraqi government spokesman Bassim al-Awadi said in a statement that 16 people, including civilians, were killed and that there was “significant damage” to homes and private property.
The United States said it informed Iraq of the operation before it began.
A U.S. official said an initial battle damage assessment showed the United States had hit each of its planned targets as well as some “dynamic targets” that emerged during the course of the mission, including a surface-to-air missile site and launch sites. of drones. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet public, did not have an assessment of the victim.
The Iraqi government has been in a delicate position since a group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, calling themselves the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, began launching attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria on October 18. The group described the attacks as retaliation for Washington’s support for Iraq. Israel in the Gaza war.
Behind the scenes, Iraqi officials have attempted to rein in the militias, including condemning U.S. retaliatory attacks as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and calling for the exit of the 2,500 U.S. troops who are in the country as part of an international coalition to fight ISIS. . Last month, Iraqi and U.S. military officials began formal talks to reduce the coalition’s presence, a process that will likely take years.