The US military conducted overnight airstrikes on Yemen in what president Donald Trump claimed was a response to Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, killing at least 31 people, most of them women and children, at the start of a campaign expected to last many days.
The airstrikes came after the Houthis threatened to resume attacks on ships linked to Israel in the Red Sea over its blockade of Gaza.
Israel cut off power, halted all international aid supplies to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory earlier this month and renewed deadly attacks, imperiling the fragile ceasefire.
The Houthis targeted around 100 military and civilian ships with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors, between October 2023, when Israel launched its war on Gaza, and January 2025, when the ceasefire took effect.
Mr Trump also warned Yemen’s chief ally, Iran, that it needed to immediately halt support to the Houthis, who rule most of the Arab country. If Iran threatened the US, he said, “America will hold you fully accountable and we won’t be nice about it!”
The top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded on Sunday that the Houthis took their own strategic and operational decisions.
“We warn our enemies that Iran will respond decisively and destructively if they take their threats into action,” Hossein Salami told state media.
The strikes — which one US official told Reuters might continue for weeks — was the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since Mr Trump took office in January. It came as the United States ramped up sanctions pressure on Tehran while trying to bring it to the negotiating table over its nuclear programme.
“To all Houthi terrorists, 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,” Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
The attacks killed at least 31 people and injured over 100, mostly women and children, Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Yemeni health ministry said on Sunday.
The Houthi political bureau described the American attacks as a “war crime.” “Our Yemeni armed forces are fully prepared to respond to escalation with escalation,” it said in a statement.
The attacks targeted the capital Sanaa, the southwestern city of Taiz and the town of Dahyan in northwestern Saada area, Al Masirah TV reported.
Dahyan is where Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the enigmatic leader of the Houthis, often meets his visitors.
“The explosions were violent and shook the neighborhood like an earthquake. They terrified our women and children,” Sanaa resident Abdullah Yahia told Reuters.
The Houthis carried out scores of attacks on ships sailing off its coast after Israel launched the war on Gaza, disrupting global commerce and setting the US military on a costly campaign to intercept missiles and drones that burned through air defence stocks.
A Pentagon spokesperson said the Yemeni attacked American warships 174 times and commercial ships 145 times until early this year.
The Houthis said the attacks were in solidarity with the Palestinians and aimed at pressuring Israel to end the assault on Gaza.
The Joe Biden administration had sought to degrade Houthi ability to attack Red Sea shipping by carrying out a series of airstrikes but had limited success.
US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr Trump had authorised a more aggressive military approach.
The US military’s Central Command, which oversees troops in the Middle East, described the attacks as the start of a major operation across Yemen.
Mr Trump held out the prospect of far more devastating military action. “The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated. We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective,” Mr Trump wrote.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi demanded that the US “end support for Israeli genocide and terrorism”. “Stop killing of Yemeni people,” he said in an X post on Sunday.
He also remarked that Washington had “no authority, or business, dictating Iranian foreign policy”.
Mr Trump recently sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeking talks over its nuclear programme.
Mr Khamenei, however, rejected holding negotiations with the US.
Iran denies seeking to develop nuclear weapons. However, it is accelerating the enrichment of uranium to up to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the International Atomic Energy Agency says.
The US and its allies say there’s no need to enrich uranium to such a high level under a civilian programme and that no other country has done so without producing nuclear bombs. Iran maintains its nuclear programme is peaceful.
