Amid the growing escalation in the Middle East following the US bombings in Syria and Iraq, Washington and the United Kingdom today launched a new large-scale operation against 13 areas of Yemen controlled by the Houthi rebels in retaliation for their attacks against the navigation in the Red Sea.
According to the US Central Command (Centcom), Washington and London – with the support of Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand – bombed a total of 39 Houthi targets spread across 13 areas in Yemen, where insurgents control much of the northwest and center of the country.
The attacks targeted several positions in the capital, Sanaa, according to EFE, while Al Masira television indicated that five other Yemen provinces were bombed: Hajjah (northwest), Dhamar (east), Al Bayda (center), Taiz (southwest) and Al Hodeida, on the shores of the Red Sea.
This would be the third joint US and British operation since both countries attacked Yemen for the first time on January 12, although Washington alone has carried out various bombings in recent weeks against Houthi missile and drone launching points.
However, the insurgents assure that these operations are not affecting their military capabilities and have even intensified their attacks against merchant ships and warships since then.
And several analysts have been skeptical about the effectiveness of the bombings against the Houthis, who have resisted almost a decade of air campaigns by the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia that has intervened in the war in Yemen since 2015.
This time, the targets attacked were “multiple underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, unmanned aerial vehicle, radar and helicopter operations and storage sites,” according to CENTCOM.
US forces insisted that these actions are intended to “degrade the capabilities of the Houthis used to continue their reckless and illegal attacks against US and British ships, as well as commercial shipping in the Red Sea, Strait of Bab al Mandel and the Gulf of Aden”.
Faced with this new operation, Houthi officer Naser al Din Amer warned in his X account that the insurgents will respond to the bombings of Washington and London until their demands are met.
“Either the aggression against Gaza stops or there will be a war until the day of judgment,” threatened the head of the rebels, who have recently been classified by the US as a terrorist organization.
The American and British bombings against Houthi positions in Yemen began in response to the attacks that the insurgents have been carrying out almost daily since November 19 against commercial ships in the Red Sea, where around 15% of maritime trade sails. world.
Since then, the insurgents have declared an “open war” on the US and the United Kingdom and organize weekly mass demonstrations throughout the country to condemn the attacks by these countries, which they accuse of being “aggressors” and “colonizers.” .
The new campaign against Yemen takes place a day after the US bombed positions of pro-Iran militias in Iraq and Syria, attacks that according to the Iraqi Government and the NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have left 45 dead in both countries. .
The action, in retaliation for the death of three American soldiers on Sunday in Jordan in a drone attack by those militias, has sparked fears in the Middle East that the war in the Gaza Strip will expand, something that Baghdad and Damascus say could have “devastating consequences” for the entire region.
Precisely, the Houthi Foreign Ministry condemned these attacks, and warned that operations in Syria, Iraq and Yemen “clearly demonstrate that the United States is the true threat to international peace and security.”
The Houthis, along with pro-Iran militias in Iraq, the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and the Palestinian movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad, are part of the informal Axis of Resistance alliance, led by Iran and deeply anti-Israel and anti-American.
