Trump orders airstrikes on Sana'a to shield Israel from Yemen’s fury

American and British warplanes savagely attack Yemen’s capital, killing and wounding as many as 22 civilians after the US president vows using “overwhelming lethal force” against the already impoverished Arab Peninsula nation that had recently resumed a ban on Israeli ships from crossing key maritime regions.

Citing an initial toll, Yemen’s health ministry said the casualties were caused during the assaults against Sana’a on Saturday, identifying the targets as purely “civilian sites.”

“The initial toll includes nine civilians killed and nine others wounded, most of whom are in critical condition,” Yemen’s official Saba news agency reported, citing a statement by the ministry.

Later, Yemen's Ansarullah popular resistance movement revised the figure to 13 fatalities and nine injuries.

According to the Saba, American-British aggression also hit the Sa’ada Province in Yemen’s extreme northwest, with a local source clarifying that the airstrikes targeted the northern part of the provincial capital.

Elsewhere in Yemen, American and British aircraft reportedly attacked the Dhamar Province to the south of the Sana’a Province, hitting Dhamar’s provincial capital and Anas District.

The statement condemned targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructures, describing it as a “full-fledged war crime and a blatant violation of international laws and conventions.”

Earlier, US President Donald Trump had announced on X, former Twitter that he had ordered the United States military to launch “decisive and powerful military action” against, what he described as, Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah popular resistance movement, although the Saturday American attacks just targeted Yemeni civilians.

"We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective,” he added.

At the discretion of Ansarullah’s leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, Yemen’s Armed Forces began striking strategic and sensitive Israeli sites in October 2023 after the Israeli regime launched a heavily-US-backed genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and heavily stepped up its restrictions on the entry of direly-needed food, medicine, and other key supplies into the coastal sliver.

The strikes as well as other operations by the forces targeting Israeli ships and vessels taking military and commercial supplies to the occupied Palestinian territories, delivered a significant blow to the regime’s economy.

Yemen targets three Israeli-linked ships, extends reach to Mediterranean

Yemen’s Armed Forces announce carrying out three pro-Palestinian operations, striking two Israeli ships and one headed towards the occupied territories.

The Yemeni troops stopped the operations after implementation of a ceasefire agreement between Tel Aviv and the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas in January.

The regime, however, has routinely violated the deal to deadly effects for Gazans. It has also choked up the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory as a means of trying to force Hamas into handing over those of the regime’s captives that remain in Gaza.

Al-Houthi recently gave the Israeli regime a four-day deadline to open the crossings and let in aid.

Yemen threatens Israel with ‘blockade’ if it ignores ultimatum on stopping Gaza attacks

Yemen warns it will resume its naval operations aimed at enforcing a “blockade” against the Israeli regime if it failed to stop its attacks on Gaza.

Yemen’s Armed Forces resumed enforcing the country’s ban on Israeli vessels crossing the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and the Gulf of Aden after Tel Aviv stopped short of heeding the deadline.

The Israeli regime, the US, and the UK have, meanwhile, been responding to the Yemeni anti-Israeli operations by taking Yemen’s civilian and defensive structures under heavy deadly attacks, prompting the Yemeni forces to retaliate by targeting US Navy assets off the country’s waters.

Adding to his post on X, though, Trump just mentioned the American vessels, saying Yemen’s attacks on them “will not be tolerated.” He also accused Yemen of “choking off shipping in one of the most important waterways of the world.”

Sana’a, though, has only been targeting Israeli and Israeli-affiliated vessels, besides the American ships that it has struck in reprisal for Washington’s atrocities.

“They have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones,” Trump added, still not making any mention of the Israeli regime and the vessels affiliated to it.

Observers, nevertheless, argue that the American aggression is aimed at trying to stop Yemen’s operations against Israeli targets, including Israeli ships, and Israeli-linked vessels. They describe the aggression as an attempt on the part of Washington to render Sana’a’s defenses incapable of taking on the regime in response to its bloodshed and destruction in Gaza.

Reporting on the American assaults, US website Axios cited an American official as saying that the aggression was not an isolated incident, but the beginning of continuous attacks against Yemen that would last for days or weeks.

Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare attack plans on Yemen weeks ago, the official added, saying he approved the attack plan on Friday afternoon and issued the final execution order on Saturday.

The source reminded that the US ordered the attacks after reinstating Washington’s designation of Ansarullah as a “terrorist organization” -- a move that came in response to Yemen’s anti-Israeli strikes.

The remarks suggested that the re-designation had been made to pave the way for Trump’s order.

According to the official, the United States had informed only a very small number of its allies about the pending attack in advance.

The allies that had alleged concerns and senior members of the US Congress were only informed of the attack after it had already begun, the source noted.

Ansarullah lashes out against ‘American terrorism,’ vows retaliation

Reacting to the Saturday bloodshed, Ansarullah’s Political Bureau said in a statement that the atrocity “is a treacherous and sinful aggression,” reiterating that “targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is a full-fledged war crime.”

The movement chimed in with condemnations from various other parties of the US’s trying to protect the Israeli regime from the repercussions of the latter’s bloodletting.  

Such massacre against Yemeni civilians is “further evidence of American terrorism against the peoples and countries opposed to it,” and “confirms that America was and still is fighting on behalf of the Zionist entity,” the statement read.

It, however, asserted that the aggression “will not deter Yemen from continuing to support Palestine and fulfilling its duties in supporting Gaza.”

The movement finally pledged that the aggression would not pass without a response, adding that the Yemeni Armed Forces were fully prepared to "confront escalation with escalation."

Mohammad al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Political Bureau, also lambasted the American and British attacks as unjustified, and asserted that Sana’a would respond to the escalation by intensifying its operations. 

‘Trump lying about Yemen threat to global navigation’

Ansarallah spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam called the attacks open aggression against an independent state that served as encouragement for the Israeli regime to persist in its unjust siege on Gaza.

He also roundly rejected the claims made by the American president about an alleged threat to international navigation in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait as “false and misleading to global public opinion.”

“The maritime siege announced by Yemen in support of Gaza exclusively targets Israeli shipping,” ensuring that humanitarian aid reached the people of Gaza as per the ceasefire agreement, Abdul Salam clarified. He also reminded that Sana’a resumed its ban after giving the regime a days-long deadline.

“We affirm that international navigation in the Red Sea remains safe from the Yemeni side, and that the American airstrikes are an attempt to remilitarize the Red Sea, which in reality poses the true threat to international navigation in the region.”

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