SANA’A, (PIC)
The US and British armies launched a new wave of strikes against sites in areas controlled by the Ansarullah (Houthi) group in northern Yemen on Saturday night, US military officials said.
The officials claimed that the overnight strikes were part of its efforts to stop what became near-daily attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and nearby waterways; however, the Ansarullah group and its armed forces repeatedly affirmed that its operations in Yemen’s waters are aimed to curb the US-backed Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
The strikes, carried out shortly before midnight in Yemen, mark the largest military action against Yemen in weeks, though US and British forces already launched smaller attacks against various targets in the Arab country.
The US officials said that the new spate of attacks targeted infrastructure and weapons that the Houthis had used to carry out attacks on ships, but local residents in Sana’a reported that the strikes targeted, in particular, abandoned military sites that had been bombed dozens of times in the past years during the Saudi-led military campaign against Yemen.
One of the strikes reportedly bombed a commercial factory in a densely-populated area in Sana’a, causing damage to nearby homes, according to eyewitnesses.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the US and Britain acted with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand adding that the new strikes were spread across eight locations, hitting underground weapons-storage facilities, missile-storage facilities, one-way attack drones, air defenses, radars and one helicopter to “further disrupt and degrade” the Houthis from carrying out attacks at sea.
There is no official information about casualties in the US-British attacks.
Later at dawn, Yemen’s armed forces responded to the US-led attacks by targeting a US-owned oil tanker and US navy ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea with missiles and drones.
The attacks were in support of the Palestinians and in response to the US-British aggression against Yemen, spokesman for the Yemeni army Yehya Sariee said.
He said the armed forces targeted the US oil tanker Torm Thor in the Gulf of Aden and several US warships in the Red Sea with “appropriate naval missiles” and drones.
The US central command said on social media X, formerly Twitter, that it intercepted a Houthi missile heading towards Torm Thor at an early hour on Sunday.
The Ansarullah group and its armed forces in northern Yemen started their attacks on international shipping in mid-November last year in an attempt to put an end to the Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
