The strikes come in retaliation for the deadly US bombing campaign launched on Yemen
The Yemen-based Houthi movement said it has targeted a US navy carrier group with two long-range strikes over the past 24-hours, calling the attacks a retaliation for the deadly bombing campaign mounted by Washington over the weekend.
The group said on Sunday that it had launched some 18 ballistic missiles and drones at the “aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and its accompanying warships.”
The attack was followed closely by another long-range strike, the group said on Monday. The Houthis did not claim to have hit the warships while the Pentagon made no public comments on alleged attack either.
US President Donald Trump ordered a “powerful military action” against the militants on Saturday, over what he described as an “unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism.”
The Houthi group, officially known as the Ansar Allah movement, has been in control of a large and the most-populous part of war-torn Yemen, including the capital city of Sanaa, since the mid-2010s, effectively acting as the country’s de-facto authorities.
The strikes on Saturday killed at least 53 people and left nearly 100 injured, according to the country’s Houthi-run health ministry. Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz claimed the strikes “hit multiple Houthi leaders and took them out.”
Additional strikes were reported by local Houthi-affiliated media on Sunday night. The targets reportedly included a cotton ginning plant located in the western coastal region of Hodeidah and an Israeli ro-ro ship seized by the Houthis over a year ago.
The group has launched numerous strikes on international shipping they believe to be linked to Israel since late 2023, in a campaign staged in solidarity with the Palestinians. The Houthis have also repeatedly conducted long-range ballistic missile and drone strikes on Israel, as well as on Western military vessels deployed into the region.
The US, UK, and Israel have repeatedly bombed alleged Houthi military sites in retaliation, yet the strikes have largely failed to stop the attacks on naval traffic.
The Houthis put their campaign on hold early this year after Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas reached a truce in Gaza. The group announced the resumption of their attacks last week after Israel failed to meet their deadline for unblocking the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
