Joint British-U.S. airstrikes targeting Yemen's Houthi rebels killed at least 16 people and wounded 35 others, the rebels said Friday, marking the highest publicly acknowledged death toll from these strikes prompted by the rebels' attacks on shipping.
Three U.S. officials, speaking anonymously about the ongoing attack, said Thursday’s strikes hit a wide range of targets, including underground facilities, missile launchers, command and control sites, a Houthi vessel and other facilities.
They described the action as a response to the recent surge in attacks by the Iran-backed group on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden amid the Israel-Palestine conflict.
U.S. F/A-18 fighter jets launched from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, with other U.S. warships in the region also participating, officials said.
However, the Houthis focused Friday morning on just one of the strikes, which they said hit a building housing Hodeida Radio and civilian homes in the port city on the Red Sea.
Their Al Masirah satellite news channel aired images of a bloodied man being carried downstairs and others receiving aid in a hospital.
The Houthis described all those killed and hurt in Hodeida as civilians.
The rebel force has held Yemen's capital, Sanaa, since 2014.
Other strikes hit outside Sanaa near its airport and communication equipment in Taiz, the broadcaster said.
Little other information was released on those sites, likely signaling that Houthi military sites had been struck.
"We confirm this brutal aggression against Yemen as punishment for its position in support of Gaza, in support of Israel to continue its crimes of genocide against the wounded, besieged and steadfast Gaza Strip,” Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam wrote on the social media platform X.
In the U.K., the Defense Ministry said Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4s conducted strikes on both Hodeida and further south in Ghulayfiqah. It described its targets as "buildings identified as housing drone ground control facilities and providing storage for very long-range drones, as well as surface-to-air weapons.”
"The strikes were taken in self-defense in the face of an ongoing threat that the Houthis pose,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said. "There's an ongoing threat that the Houthis pose.”
The U.S. and the U.K. have launched strikes against the Houthis since January, with the U.S. regularly carrying out its own in the time since as well.
Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the Houthis’ secretive supreme leader, offered an overall death toll for the strikes up to that point, as 40 people killed and 35 others wounded.
He did not offer a breakdown between civilian and combatant casualties at the time.
The Houthis have stepped up attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, demanding that Israel end its attacks on Gaza, which has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
The latest conflict began following Hamas' Oct. 7 incursion on south Israel that killed about 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostage.
The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, killed three sailors, seized one vessel, and sunk another since November, according to the U.S. Maritime Administration.
This week, they attacked a ship carrying grain to Iran, the rebels' main benefactor.
On Wednesday, another U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone apparently crashed in Yemen, with the Houthis claiming they fired a surface-to-air missile at it.
The U.S. Air Force didn’t report any aircraft missing, leading to suspicion that the drone may have been piloted by the CIA. As many as three may have been lost in May alone.
