The United States and Britain launched new strikes on Yemen's Huthis Monday, saying their second round of joint military action against the Iran-backed rebels was in response to continued attacks on shipping.
American and British forces carried out a first wave of strikes against the rebel group on January 11, and the United States launched further air raids against missiles that Washington said were ready to launch and posed a threat to both civilian and military vessels.
But the Huthis have vowed to continue their attacks and said Monday that they targeted a US military cargo ship -- an assertion a US official disputed.
The latest US-UK strikes were against "eight Huthi targets in Yemen in response to the Huthis' continued attacks against international and commercial shipping as well as naval vessels transiting the Red Sea," Washington and London said in a joint statement with other countries that supported the military action.
They "specifically targeted a Huthi underground storage site and locations associated with the Huthis' missile and air surveillance capabilities," the statement said.
"These precision strikes are intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Huthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent mariners," it said, adding that the rebel group had carried out "a series of illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing" actions since the previous joint US-UK air raids.
Yemen's official Saba news agency said that "American-British forces are launching raids on the capital of Sanaa" and several other parts of Yemen, while Huthi TV outlet al-Masirah said four strikes targeted the Al-Dailami military base north of the capital, which is under rebel control.
Earlier on Monday, Huthi rebels claimed they fired on a US military cargo ship off the coast of Yemen.
- Two months of attacks -
The rebel group "led a military operation targeting the American military cargo ship Ocean Jazz in the Gulf of Aden," near the Red Sea, with missiles, said Huthi military spokesman Yahya Saree.
Asked about the claim, a US defense official told AFP: "We're not seeing that at all on our end and believe that statement to be untrue."
The Yemeni rebels began striking Red Sea shipping in November, saying they were hitting Israeli-linked vessels in support of Palestinians in Gaza, which has been ravaged by the Hamas-Israel war.
The Huthis have since declared American and British interests to be legitimate targets as well.
In addition to military action, Washington is seeking to put diplomatic and financial pressure on the Huthis, re-designating them as a "terrorist" entity last week after dropping that label soon after President Joe Biden took office.
The rebels reiterated on Monday that they will "respond to any attack" on Yemen and continue to "prevent Israeli ships" from crossing the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden until the end of the war in the Palestinian territory.
Yemen is just one part of a growing crisis in the Middle East linked to the war in Gaza, where Israel's relentless bombardment and ground offensive have killed at least 25,295 people, around 70 percent of them women, children and adolescents, according to the territory's health ministry.
Israel's campaign began after the unprecedented October attacks by Hamas resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Rising tensions and violence across the Middle East -- involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen -- have stoked fears of a wider regional conflict.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
