The US military announced that it destroyed two anti-ship missiles in Yemen on Wednesday morning that “posed an imminent threat to maritime navigation in the region.”
The US military command in the Middle East said:Centcom) – in a statement – “American forces detected the two missiles in the areas they control The Houthis In Yemen, I concluded that they represent an imminent threat to commercial ships and US Navy ships in the region.”
The statement added, “Accordingly, American forces targeted the missiles and destroyed them in self-defense.”
The statement stressed that the destruction of these two missiles “protects freedom of navigation and makes international waters safer for US Navy ships and commercial ships.”
In addition to the military action, Washington seeks to exert diplomatic and financial pressure on the Houthis, and it reclassified them as a “terrorist organization” last week after dropping this classification shortly after the president took office. joe biden His position.
Yesterday, Tuesday, a member of the Supreme Political Council of the Houthis, Muhammad Ali Al-Houthi, called on the United States and Britain to withdraw their military ships from… The Red SeaHe vowed to “sink any ship working against the Yemeni people.”
Al-Houthi said, “The American-British presence in the Red Sea comes to defend the Zionist entity, which is committing a war of genocide and forced displacement against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and not to protect international maritime navigation as Washington and London claim.”
In solidarity with Gaza – which has been subjected to a devastating Israeli war with American support since October 7, 2023 – the Houthis targeted, with missiles and drones, cargo ships linked to Israel in the Red Sea, which negatively affected the movement of shipping, trade, and global supply chains.
Since January 12, a US-led coalition has been launching raids intermittently, which it says target Houthi sites in various regions of Yemen, in response to its attacks in the Red Sea.
The Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, announced yesterday, Tuesday, that “the US-British aggression aircraft” launched 18 air strikes during the past hours on several areas in Yemen, vowing that they would not go unanswered.
The Houthi group announced the day before yesterday, Monday, that it had targeted an American military cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden.
