Houthis threaten ‘escalation’ as US, UK strikes kill 16

Yemen’s Houthis threatened yesterday to escalate attacks on Red Sea shipping after overnight strikes by the United States and Britain that the fighters said killed 16 people.
The toll announced by the Houthis, which AFP could not independently verify, would make the strikes some of the deadliest since the US and Britain launched their campaign in January against disruption of the vital trade route.
The rebels, who control much of Yemen, have carried out scores of drone and missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since November, citing solidarity with Palestinians over the Israel-Hamas war.
The US military’s Central Command (Centcom), said 13 Houthi facilities were targeted in the latest strikes.
“The American-British aggression will not prevent us from continuing our military operations,” Houthi official Mohamed al-Bukhaiti said on X, vowing to “meet escalation with escalation”.
AFP journalists heard explosions in the capital Sanaa and the port city of Hodeidah overnight from Thursday to yesterday.
Strikes also targeted telecoms infrastructure in the city of Taez, the rebels said.
In a statement on X, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said 16 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in Hodeidah alone, including an unspecified number of civilians.
In response, the rebels launched a missile attack on US aircraft carrier the USS Dwight D Eisenhower in the Red Sea, Saree said, an operation that Washington has yet to confirm.
The Houthis “will not hesitate to respond directly and immediately to every new aggression on Yemeni territories”, Saree said.
At a demonstration in Sanaa, Hussein Ali, a resident of the rebel-held capital, was also defiant.
“No matter how much they bomb us, this won’t stop us at all,” he said. “Even if they destroy the houses on top of us, we won’t back down from the Palestinian issue.” Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Al-Masirah television broadcast a video showing bloodied men wounded in a purported strike on a building housing a radio station in Hodeidah.
The channel showed victims receiving treatment at a hospital, although AFP could not independently verify the authenticity of the images.
A hospital employee in Hodeidah said many fighters were among those killed and wounded in the attack, but was unable to give exact figures.
The British defence ministry said its warplanes launched strikes in “a joint operation with US forces against Houthi military facilities”.
The ministry said intelligence indicated two sites near Hodeidah were involved in the attacks on shipping, “with a number of buildings identified as housing drone ground control facilities and providing storage for very long range drones, as well as surface to air weapons”.