The U. S. military attacked another Houthi-controlled site in Yemen early Saturday because it said it endangered ships sailing in the Red Sea, two U. S. officials said.
The Associated Press in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, heard a loud explosion.
The first day of attacks, Friday, hit 28 sites and more than 60 targets. However, the U. S. decided that the farthest location, a radar site, still posed a risk to maritime traffic, one official said.
The officials spoke anonymously to the AP to discuss an operation that had not yet been publicly announced.
President Joe Biden had warned on Friday that the Houthis could face additional attacks.
The latest attack came after the US Navy on Friday warned US-flagged ships to stay away from areas around Yemen, in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, for the next 72 hours, after The United States and Britain will launch several airstrikes against the Houthi rebels.
The caution comes as Yemen’s Houthis vow fierce retaliation for U. S. -led attacks, raising the prospect of a wider standoff in a region already plagued by Israel’s war in Gaza.
U. S. military and White House officials have said they expect the Houthis to try to fight back.
The U.S.-led bombardment — launched in response to a recent campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships in the vital Red Sea — killed at least five people and wounded six, the Houthis said. The U.S. said the strikes, in two waves, took aim at targets in 28 different locations across Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.
“We will make sure we respond to the Houthis if they continue this outrageous custom with our allies,” Biden told reporters in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
Asked if he thought the Houthis were a terrorist group, Biden replied, “I think so. “The president, in a subsequent exchange with reporters in Allentown, Pennsylvania, said whether the Houthis were redesignated as such was “irrelevant. “
Biden also rejected criticism from some lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, who claimed to have asked Congress for authorization before proceeding with the attacks.
“They are wrong, and I sent out this morning, when the actions were taken, exactly what happened,” Biden said.
Pentagon Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the military action from the hospital where he is recovering from headaches after prostate cancer surgery.
The White House said in November it was contemplating redesignating the Houthis as a terrorist organization after they began attacking civilian ships. The directorate officially removed the Houthis from the list of “foreign terrorist organizations” and “specially designated global terrorists” in 2021, reversing a resolution through President Donald Trump.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday’s U. S. measures took place largely in sparsely populated spaces and that the number of other people killed would not be high. He said the measures affected weapons, radars and target sites, adding remote mountainous spaces.
As bombardments lit up the pre-dawn sky over several sites controlled by Iranian-backed rebels, they forced the world to roll back Yemen’s years-long war, which began when the Houthis seized the country’s capital.
Since November, the rebels have repeatedly targeted ships in the Red Sea, saying they were avenging Israel’s offensive in Gaza against Hamas. But they have frequently targeted vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, imperiling shipping in a key route for global trade and energy shipments.
Houthi army spokesman Maj. Gen. Yahya Saree said in a recorded speech that the U. S. measures “will go unanswered or go unpunished. “
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat and former U.S. intelligence official, welcomed the U.S. strikes but expressed concern Iran was aiming to draw the U.S. deeper into conflict.
“We should be worried about regional escalation,” Slotkin wrote on X. “Iran uses groups like the Houthis to fight their battles, maintain plausible deniability and prevent a direct conflict with the U.S. or others. … It needs to stop, and my hope is they’ve gotten the message.”
Biden told reporters that Iran had received a transparent message. “I have already conveyed the message to Iran. They know how to do anything,” he said.
While Biden’s leadership and its allies have sought for weeks to calm tensions in the Middle East and prevent a wider conflict, the moves have threatened to provoke it.
Saudi Arabia, which supports the government-in-exile that the Houthis are fighting, has sought to temporarily distance itself from the attacks as it seeks a sensible détente with Iran and a ceasefire in Yemen. The U. S. -backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
The extent of the damage caused by Friday’s measures is still unclear, with the Houthis saying at least five sites, including airfields, were targeted. The White House said the U. S. military was still assessing the extent to which the militants’ roles might have been degraded.
U. S. Air Force Central CommandHe said the measures were aimed at Houthi command and nodes, ammunition depots, launch systems, production facilities and radar systems. air defense. The moves involved more than 150 precision-guided munitions, adding air-launched missiles from the F/A-18 Super Hornets founded on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Tomahawk missiles from the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and USS Mason, from the Navy cruiser. USS Philippines. Sea and an American submarine.
The UK said the measures affected a site in Bani that the Houthis allegedly used to launch drones and an airfield at Abbs used to launch cruise missiles and drones.
Separately, the U. S. Treasury Department announced on Friday that it had imposed sanctions on two corporations in Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates for allegedly shipping Iranian goods on behalf of Iran-based Houthi monetary facilitator Sa’id al-Jamal. Corporations were also known as blocked property.
In a separate development, Iran released footage of its seizure of an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman that once had been at the center of a dispute between Tehran and Washington.
In the images, a helicopter is seen flying over the bridge of San Nicolás. The Iranian military seized the ship on Thursday. The shipment was formerly known as Suez Rajan. The U. S. seized 1 million barrels of sanctioned Iranian oil last year.
In Yemen, Hussein al-Ezzi, a Houthi official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that “the United States and Britain will have to prepare to pay a heavy price and bear all the disastrous consequences of this blatant aggression. “
The direction of the Red Sea is a waterway and the attacks taking place there have caused serious disruptions to world trade. Benchmark Brent crude traded 4% higher on Friday at more than $80 a barrel. Meanwhile, Tesla has announced that it will temporarily halt maximum production at its German factory due to the attacks in the Red Sea.
In Saada, a Houthi stronghold in northwestern Yemen, many other people gathered Friday for a demonstration denouncing the United States and Israel. Another drew thousands of people to Sana’a, the capital.
The Houthis are now a territory that is home to roughly two-thirds of Yemen’s population, or 34 million. War and poor governance have made Yemen one of the most deficient countries in the Arab world, and the World Food Programme considers the vast majority of Yemen’s population to be food insecure.
Yemen has been the target of U. S. military action for the past four U. S. presidencies. During George W. Bush’s presidency, a crusade of drone moves to target al-Qaeda’s local partner began, attacks that have continued under the Biden administration. has introduced raids and other military operations amid the ongoing war in Yemen.
This war began when the Houthis invaded Sana’a in 2014. A Saudi-led coalition, joined by the United Arab Emirates, introduced a war to prop up Yemen’s government-in-exile in 2015, temporarily turning the clash into a regional confrontation as Iran subsidized the Houthis with weapons and other means.
However, the fighting has slowed as the Houthis maintain their control over the territory they control. In March, Saudi Arabia reached a China-brokered deal to revive relations with Iran in the hope of nonetheless fleeing the war.
Iran condemned Friday’s attack through Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani.
“Arbitrary attacks will have no result other than fueling insecurity and instability in the region,” he said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning called on nations to escalate tensions in the Red Sea. And Russia on Friday condemned the measures as “illegitimate from the point of view of foreign law. “