Tuesday saw the announcement by the commander of the Houthi forces that they are prepared for a “long-term confrontation” with the United States and Great Britain. This comes after Houthi militants in Yemen claimed to have fired a missile on an American Navy ship in the Gulf of Aden on January 28.
“We are prepared for a long-term confrontation with the forces of tyranny. The Americans, the British, and those who coordinated with them must realize the power of the sovereign Yemeni decision and that there is no debate or dispute over it,” Mohamed al-AtifiYemen mentioned in a statement, as quoted by Reuters.
On January 22, Monday, the United States and the United Kingdom jointly launched new attacks on eight targets in Yemen that the Iranian-backed Houthis were using to harass commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
“These precision strikes are intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent mariners,” the statement averred, adding that the rebel group had continued “a series of illegal, dangerous, and destabilising”.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s official Saba news agency claimed that “American-British forces are launching raids on the capital of Sanaa” and many other locations of Yemen.
The US and the UK launched their first wave of missiles and Tomahawks against the Houthis in the early hours of January 12; since then, the group has caused chaos for shippers worldwide and disrupted traffic through a waterway that was previously responsible for 12% of global trade. The airstrikes were the most significant of these attacks.
