Yemeni Hooty militia vowed to retaliation after ordering a massive military strike against targets managed by groups that President Trump said had killed at least 31 people.
The Iran-backed group said that women and children were among the women and children killed in Saturday's strike, the most important US military action in the Middle East since Trump took office in January.
For more than a year, Houthis launched an attack on Israel, threatening commercial transport in the Red Sea on October 7, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas, the ally who led the attack on Israel that sparked war in Gaza.
According to a report by the Houthi-run Media Channel, US airstrikes have targeted Yemen's Hauti-controlled areas, including the capital, Sana, Sadah, Albaida, Hajija and Damar provinces. The strike killed at least 31 people and injured 101 people, “most of which were children and women,” said Anis Al Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run Ministry of Health.
The victim figures cannot be independently verified, and the US does not give estimates on the number of people killed or injured on strikes.
The US Central Command, which posted a video of a bomb leveling the compounds in Yemeni buildings, said the US “employed precision strikes to protect American interests, block the enemy and restore freedom of navigation.”
The US airstrikes also targeted power facilities in Dahyan, a town in the northwestern Sada province, causing power outages all night, residents said.
The Houthi-Run Al-Masirah Television channel reported that 13 people were killed and nine were injured in an airstrike in Al-Jeraf, a Sana district that is considered the group's home. In the northwest state of Sada, 10 people were killed, including four children, when airstrikes struck two buildings, the report said.
Sana residents share images and videos on social media, indicating that stolen windows and fireballs are rising from the site where they were attacked. Others posted messages they struggled when the airstrike was hit.
Sana resident Abdul Rahman al-Nura said the explosion shattered the windows of his house and terrorized his four children. “I quickly accepted them and comforted them,” Alnula said over the phone. “The child and mother are afraid and still shocked.”
Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, a senior leader at Houthi, vowed retaliation against the United States and called the strike unfair. “We respond to escalations through escalations,” he wrote to X.
The Hoothi ​​rebels, which control most of northern Yemen, temporarily halted attacks in the Red Sea when a ceasefire came into effect in Gaza in January. However, last week they said they would target Israeli ships that violate the ban on Israeli ships passing through the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Babel Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden.
Bab el Mandev is a strait between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.
In a statement on his true social platform, Trump said the strike was also intended as a warning to Iran, the main supporter of the Houtis.
“Houthi's support for terrorists must end soon!” he wrote. He also warned Iran about threatening the US, saying, “America will hold you completely accountable and we're not good about it!”
Hossein Salami, commander of the chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, denied his country on Sunday that he was helping Yemeni rebels. Houthi Militia made “its own strategic decisions,” and Tehran was quoted as saying by Iranian state presses that he “played no role in setting the group's national or operational policies.”
A few days after taking office, Trump issued an executive order to redesignate Houthis as a “foreign terrorist organization,” calling the group a threat to local security.
The order restored the designation given to the group later in the first Trump administration. The Biden administration lifted its designation shortly after taking office to promote peace talks in Yemen's civil war.
Last year, the Biden administration named Houches the “specially designated global terrorist” group (a less severe category) in response to attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.
Russian Foreign Ministry said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov told Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday that all sides should stop Yemen's “use of force” and enter “political dialogue.” Moscow denounced us past Yemen.
Another Iranian armed agent in the region, Hezbollah, expressed his condemnation of the US attack on Yemen, describing it as a “war crime,” according to a statement on Sunday.
