The Houthis have fired on another merchant ship in the Red Sea. Yemen asks for more help
American forces assure that the United States is not at war with the Houthi terrorist organization. Yemeni politicians are asking for greater international involvement in the fight against the group that is destabilizing the traffic of cargo ships. Another tanker was shot at on Thursday.
On the night of January 11-12, British and American troops attacked Yemen (south-western part of Asia). These are areas controlled by the Houthi Movement. The Yemeni organization is considered by some to be terrorist.
USA: We are not at war with the Houthis
60 targets in 16 locations were attacked. Including, among others: radar systems, air defense systems and places for storing and launching unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), cruise and ballistic missiles. The military used more than 100 different types of precision-guided missiles. However, this was not the final crackdown on the Iran-backed terrorist group.
On Thursday evening, the allied Houthi militia fired two anti-ship ballistic missiles at a US-owned oil tanker. The missiles hit the water near the ship without causing any injuries or damage, U.S. Central Command said.
On Thursday, the Pentagon, referring to the fifth round of attacks by its forces on Yemen’s rebels, declared that the United States was not at war with the Houthis.
“We are not at war with the Houthis,” Singh said. It is the Houthis who continue to fire cruise and anti-ship missiles at innocent sailors. (…) What we do together with our partners is self-defense, said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
US President Joe Biden admitted that the military operation against the Houthis had failed to stop their attacks in the Red Sea and that it would continue.
The Yemeni authorities are asking for international help
The deputy head of Yemen’s Presidential Council has requested international assistance to carry out a ground operation against the Houthis.
The ground forces that belong to the legitimate government of Yemen must be helped, said Aidarous al-Zoubaïdi, deputy chairman of the Presidential Council of Yemen, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland
He emphasized that air attacks without ground operations are useless, and more coordinated military cooperation and exchange of intelligence information, training and equipment of government forces are necessary.
– On this matter, we want to talk to the United States and Great Britain, which are involved in airstrikes against Yemeni rebels, Zoubaïdi said.
Who are the Houthis?
In the 1980s, the cleric leader Hussein al-Houthi created the Believing Youth, a movement that was intended to oppose Sunni organizations financed by Saudi Arabia. In 2001, the al-Houthi group disbanded and its members became known as the Houthis and launched an anti-government insurgency against Sunnis from 2004 and gradually became one of the most important players in Yemen’s civil war. In 2015, the Houthis staged a coup d’état, as a result of which some countries recognized it as a terrorist organization.
The Houthis limited their activities to Yemen and were not widely known outside the Arabian Peninsula. This changed in late 2023 when militias began attacking ships, hijacked a cargo ship and damaged a Norwegian tanker. In response to these actions, on December 18, the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, announced the creation of a naval coalition, which officially included ten countries. Five American destroyers are in the Red Sea region, while the aircraft carrier USS Dwight Eisenhower is moored near Djibouti.
