WASHINGTON: US-led airstrikes on Yemen killed at least five people and wounded six others, a military spokesman from the Houthi rebels said Friday.
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree made the announcement in a videotaped address.

“The American and British enemy bears full responsibility for its criminal aggression against our Yemeni people, and it will not go unanswered and unpunished,” Saree said.
He described 73 strikes hitting five regions of Yemen under Houthi control. He did not elaborate on what the US-led strikes targeted.

US Central Command described military strikes against Houthi sites as a ‘success’ in a statement on Friday morning.

The US Central Command said they hold the Iranian-backed Houthis responsible for attacks on international shipping over the past few weeks. These strikes aimed to undermine the Houthi ability to carry out more attacks.

Sixty targets at 16 Houthi locations were hit by more than 100 precision-guided munitions, it said.

Adding “We hold the Houthi militants and their destabilizing Iranian sponsors responsible for the illegal, indiscriminate, and reckless attacks on international shipping that have impacted 55 nations so far, including endangering the lives of hundreds of mariners, including the United States,” said General Michael Erik Kurilla, USCENTCOM Commander.

Friday’s strikes targeted an air base, airports and a military camp, the Houthi rebels’ Al-Masirah TV station said, with AFP correspondents and witnesses also reporting they could hear bombardments.

“Our country was subjected to a massive aggressive attack by American and British ships, submarines and warplanes,” Houthi Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Al-Ezzi said, according to official rebel media.

“America and Britain will have to prepare to pay a heavy price and bear all the dire consequences of this blatant aggression,” he said.

The strikes involved fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles, the US Air Forces Central Command said.

“Today, at my direction, US military forces — together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands — successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways,” Biden said in a statement, using an alternative spelling of Houthi.

British Armed Forces minister James Heappey said “Our action and the action of the Americans last night was in self-defense in order to defend against further attacks on our warships as they go about their legal and reasonable business,” Heappey said.

Heappey described the strikes as a proportionate response to the crisis in the Red Sea.

“Of course we have an eye on the need to make sure it doesn’t cause a regional escalation,” he said. “We’ll see over the course of the next few days whether the attacks stop,” he added.

Associated Press journalists in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, heard four explosions early Friday local time but saw no sign of warplanes.

Two residents of Hodieda, Amin Ali Saleh and Hani Ahmed, said they heard five strong explosions. Hodieda lies on the Red Sea and is the largest port city controlled by the Houthis.
The strikes marked the first US military response to what has been a persistent campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships since the start of the Israel-Hamas.

And the coordinated military assault comes just a week after the White House and a host of partner nations issued a final warning to the Houthis to cease the attacks or face potential military action. The warning appeared to have had at least some short-lived impact, as attacks stopped for several days. On Tuesday, however, the Houthi rebels fired their largest-ever barrage of drones and missiles targeting shipping in the Red Sea, with US and British ships and American fighter jets responding by shooting down 18 drones, two cruise missiles and an anti-ship missile.

And on Thursday, the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile into the Gulf of Aden, which was seen by a commercial ship but did not hit the ship.
The rebels, who have carried out 27 attacks involving dozens of drones and missiles just since Nov. 19, said Thursday that any attack by American forces on its sites in Yemen will spark a fierce military response.
“The response to any American attack will not only be at the level of the operation that was recently carried out with more than 24 drones and several missiles,” said Abdel Malek Al-Houthi, the group’s supreme leader, during an hour-long speech. “It will be greater than that.”
The Houthis say their assaults are aimed at stopping Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But their targets increasingly have little or no connection to Israel and imperil a crucial trade route linking Asia and the Middle East with Europe.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council passed a resolution Wednesday that demanded the Houthis immediately cease the attacks and implicitly condemned their weapons supplier, Iran. It was approved by a vote of 11-0 with four abstentions — by Russia, China, Algeria and Mozambique.