Yemeni health officials say nine civilians killed in US bombardment, days after Houthis vowed to resume maritime attacks if Israel did not lift Gaza blockade.
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 and nine injured in the strikes in the Yemeni capital Sanaa 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-aligned group of threatening Red Sea shipping.
The Houthis, who control much of the Arabian Peninsula country, started a campaign targeting the busy sea route in support of Palestinians in Gaza after Israel began bombing the besieged enclave.
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 Sanaa. The Houthi media office said the U.S. strikes hit “a residential neighborhood” in Sanaa’s northern district of Shouab.
Sanaa residents said at least four airstrikes rocked the Eastern Geraf neighborhood in Shouab district, terrifying women and children in the area. “The explosions were very strong,” said Abdallah al-Alffi. “It was like an earthquake.”
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The strikes take place as the armed group announced this week it would resume attacks on Israeli ships after Israel failed to stop its punishing blockade of 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 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 US, and some of its allies, have carried out a series of cruise missile attacks on Yemen since January 2024, as Israel’s war in Gaza raged and as the Houthis kept up their sustained maritime campaign.
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.
