The U.S. Central Command said it conducted a self-defense strike early Sunday against a Houthi anti-ship cruise missile “prepared to launch against ships in the Red Sea.”
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Centcom said U.S. forces had determined that the cruise missile in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen “presented an imminent threat to U.S. Navy ships and merchant vessels in the region.” Centcom said its action ensures freedom of navigation and makes international waters “safer and more secure for U.S. Navy vessels and merchant vessels.”
In a second wave of retaliatory attacks against Iran-backed groups, the United States and Britain struck at least 36 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday.
The joint operation focused on weapon launchers, radar sites and drones.
In a statement Saturday, the Pentagon said the U.S. and Britain hit 36 Houthi targets across 13 locations in Yemen using U.S. F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier. The USS Gravely and the USS Carney Navy destroyers also fired Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
“These precision strikes are intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade, and the lives of innocent mariners, and are in response to a series of illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi actions since previous coalition strikes on January 11 and 22, 2024, including the January 27 attack which struck and set ablaze the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker M/V Marlin Luanda,” the statement said.
U.S. President Joe Biden was briefed on the attacks before he left Saturday for a campaign trip on the West Coast, an administration official said.
The Houthis made it clear Saturday that they aren’t backing down.
“Military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us,” Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a Houthi official, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”
The U.S. strikes targeted deeply buried weapons storage facilities, missile systems and launchers, air defense systems, radars and helicopters, the Defense Department said. The British military said it struck a ground control station west of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, that has been used to control Houthi drones that have launched against vessels in the Red Sea.
Hours before the latest joint operation, the U.S. Central Command said it took out six anti-ship cruise missiles that were ready to launch.
The Houthis said there were 14 attacks; 11 targeted the Al-Barah area in the Maqbanah District and areas in the Haifan District, a security source told the Houthi-run Yemeni News Agency (Saba). The other three attacks targeted Jabal Al-Jada’ in Al-Lahiya District and the Al-Salif District in Al-Hudaydah Governorate.
The strikes were the second wave of attacks that began Friday when the U.S. hit more than 85 targets linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its proxies in Iraq and Syria, in retaliation for last Sunday’s deadly drone attack on an American military base in Jordan.
White House spokesperson John Kirby said three facilities were hit in Iraq and four in Syria.
Biden said the strikes demonstrate to “all those who might seek to do us harm” that “if you harm an American, we will respond.”
According to the U.S. Central Command, the retaliatory strikes reportedly killed nearly 40 people and injured about 23. The operation included long-range B-1 bombers flown from the U.S. that used more than 125 precision munitions, according to U.S. military officials.
