United States President Donald Trump has announced a series of strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in the most significant military action of his second term to date.
At least nine civilians were killed in the strikes on Saturday, according to Yemen’s Houthi-run Health Ministry.
“Your time is up, and your attacks must stop, starting today. If they don’t, hell will rain down upon you like nothing you have ever seen before,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social, his social media site.
“I have ordered the US military today to launch a decisive and powerful military operation against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen,” Trump added.
“We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective,” he said in the post, accusing the Iran-backed group of threatening Red Sea shipping.
Trump also told Iran it needed to immediately stop supporting the Houthis. He said if Iran threatens the US, “America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”
Earlier, Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV reported attacks in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.
Quoting two senior US officials, The New York Times reported the attacks were part of a new large-scale US offensive against the Houthis in Yemen.
The air strikes appear to have targeted an ammunition or missile depot.
The strikes take place as the armed group announced this week it would resume attacks on Israeli ships after Israel failed to stop halting the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The Yemeni group said it was “resuming the ban on the passage of all Israeli ships” in the Red Sea.
“Any Israeli ship attempting to violate this ban shall be targeted in the declared zone of operations,” it said in a statement on Tuesday. The “ban” also covers the Arabian Sea, Bab al-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden, the group said.
The Houthis, who control much of the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, started a campaign targeting the busy sea route in support of Hamas after Israel began bombing the Strip.
The strikes affected global trade, forcing a significant volume of maritime traffic between Asia and Europe away from the Suez Canal to take the far longer journey around Africa.
The group halted its drone and missile attacks, which had targeted vessels with tenuous Israeli links when the Gaza ceasefire was declared in January.
But it threatened to resume the attacks when Israel blocked all aid into war-battered Gaza on March 2, in the hope of pressuring Hamas into releasing remaining captives it took in its October 7, 2023 attack.
Earlier this month, the US designated the Houthi movement, known formally as Ansar Allah, as a “foreign terrorist” organisation.
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