Joint UK-US airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels killed at least 16 people and wounded 35 others, the rebels have said, the highest publicly acknowledged death toll from strikes carried out in response to their attacks on shipping.
Three US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the strikes on Thursday as hitting a wide range of underground facilities, missile launchers, command and control sites, a Houthi vessel and other facilities. They called it a response to a recent surge in attacks by the Iran-backed militia group on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden over the Israel-Hamas war.
The US FA-18 fighter jets involved in the strikes were launched from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, officials said. Other US warships in the region also participated.
The Houthis focused on Friday morning on just one of the strikes, which they said hit a building housing Hodeida Radio and civilian homes in the port city on the Red Sea. The Al-Masirah satellite news channel aired images of one bloodied man being carried down stairs and others in the hospital receiving aid.
The Houthis said all those killed and hurt in Hodeida were civilians, something the Associated Press could not immediately confirm. The rebel force that has held Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, since 2014 includes fighters who often are not in uniform.
Other strikes hit outside Sana’a, near its airport, and at communication equipment in Taiz, the broadcaster said. Little other information was released on those sites, suggesting Houthi military sites had been struck.
“We confirm this brutal aggression against Yemen as punishment for its position in support of Gaza, in support of Israel to continue its crimes of genocide against the wounded, besieged and steadfast Gaza Strip,” a Houthi spokesperson, Mohammed Abdulsalam, wrote on X.
In the UK, the Ministry of Defence said Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4s had conducted strikes on Hodeida and further south in Ghulayfiqah. It described its targets as “buildings identified as housing drone ground control facilities and providing storage for very long-range drones, as well as surface-to-air weapons”.
“The strikes were taken in self-defence in the face of an ongoing threat that the Houthis pose,” the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said. “There’s an ongoing threat that the Houthis pose.”
The US and the UK have been carrying out strikes against the Houthis since January, with the US regularly attacking on its own as well. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the Houthis’ secretive supreme leader, said in all 40 people had been killed in the strikes and 35 wounded. He did not give a breakdown between civilian and combatant casualties.
The Houthis have stepped up attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, demanding that Israel end the war in Gaza, which has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians. The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage.
The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, killed three sailors, seized one vessel and sunk another since November, according to the US Maritime Administration. This week, they attacked a ship carrying grain to Iran, the rebels’ main benefactor.
On Wednesday, a US MQ-9 Reaper drone apparently crashed in Yemen, with the Houthis claiming they had fired a surface-to-air missile at it. The US air force did not report any aircraft missing, leading to suspicion that the drone may have been piloted by the CIA. As many as three may have been lost in May alone.