US bombs Yemen radar station in latest missile blitz
Follow-on to series of strikes carried out by US and the UK, hitting more than 60 targets in retaliation for ongoing attacks on Red Sea shipping
THE United States launched a second blitz on Yemen yesterday, destroying a Houthi-controlled radar station.
The early morning attack on the radar site was carried out by the USS Carney using Tomahawk missiles, and was described by US Central Command as a ‘follow-on action on a specific military target’.
It comes after a series of missile strikes by America and the UK hit more than 60 targets in an attack ‘designed to degrade the Houthis’ ability to attack maritime vessels, including commercial vessels’.
Dozens of sites were targeted across Yemen in retaliation against the Iran-backed forces for months of attacks on Red Sea shipping.
Following the initial strikes there were reports ‘suspicious’ small boats had approached merchant ships in the region.
Yesterday, US President Joe Biden said he had delivered a private message to Iran about Houthi attacks, and the US is ‘confident we’re well prepared’.
Mr Biden said on Friday night that he had ‘already delivered a message to Iran’ and added that ‘they know not to do anything’.
‘We must be prepared to defend ourselves’
The Houthis are part of an Iranaligned regional alliance, which also includes Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
They govern swathes of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, more than a thousand miles from Israel.
Yemen’s Houthis have been carrying out attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, prompting the US and the
UK to respond with airstrikes.
Amid rising tensions across the Middle East the Houthis vowed a ‘strong and effective’ response to the latest US missile strike, while the United Nations’ special envoy to Yemen has expressed concern over recent developments, urging ‘all involved to exercise maximum restraint’.
After Friday’s bombing, Houthi militants resumed their attacks on international shipping. But one assault backfired when they mistakenly fired on a tanker carrying Russian oil off the Yemeni coast.
Raising fears of an attack on Israel, Houthi terrorists released a chilling video of its fighters storming a compound in a mock exercise.
The clip simulated an assault on an Israeli settlement similar to the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on southern Israel.
In the video, Houthi forces storm the mock-up village with one Houthi rebel shooting a poster of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. It also depicts Houthi troops taking two men in Orthodox Jewish dress hostage.
In the Middle East tensions continued to rise. Israel pounded the southern Gaza border town of Rafah, warning Egypt that it is planning a military operation to take control of the Egypt-Gaza border.
Meanwhile. British prime minister, Rishi Sunak warned the world is facing its most volatile period for decades. Mr Sunak told The Mail on Sunday that the attacks in the Red Sea, combined with the Gaza war and the conflict in Ukraine, presented Western governments with multiple diplomatic challenges.
Mr Sunak said: ‘They have carried out the biggest attack on a Royal Navy warship in decades. So it is entirely right and necessary that we respond. And we have done it in a proportionate and targeted way, acting in self-defence. It was a last resort after exhausting multiple diplomatic avenues.
‘We must be prepared to defend ourselves if lives are at risk and there is a significant impact on the global economy, which in turn affects people at home.’