US launches 'precision strike' against Houthis

 The targeted bombing targeted military installations near Sana'a, the capital of Yemen.

The US military said it carried out precision airstrikes on Saturday (21.12.2024) against a missile storage facility and a command and control facility operated by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen's capital Sanaa.

In a statement, the US Army's Central Command, Centcom, said the strikes were aimed at "disrupting and degrading Houthi operations, such as attacks on US Navy warships and merchant ships in the southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden." A similar attack had already taken place last month.

Yemen's Shiite Houthi rebels had accused the United States and the United Kingdom today of bombing an area housing military barracks on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen's capital, reported Yemeni television Al Masirah, mouthpiece of the insurgents. "US-British aggression targeting the Attan area in the capital Sanaa," the channel said, without giving further details.

The rebels, for their part, have been attacking ships linked to Israel in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea since last year in "solidarity" with the people of the Gaza Strip over the war in the Palestinian enclave, and they launch projectiles against Israeli territory, although most of them are intercepted. However, today, the Houthis claimed the launch of a ballistic missile against Tel Aviv, which hit the Israeli city and left more than a dozen wounded.

The internationally recognized Yemeni government, for its part, also announced this Saturday that it will reopen its embassy in Damascus as soon as it recovers its diplomatic mission building, which the regime of Bashar Al Assad "refused to hand over" because it was occupied by the Shiite Houthi rebels.

lgc (efe, rtr)