The New York Budgets

Tag: Yemen

  • Trump declares the U.S. to be terminating its offensive actions against Houthi forces

    Trump declares the U.S. to be terminating its offensive actions against Houthi forces

    The United States and Houthis in Yemen reached a deal to halt American airstrikes against the group after the Iranian-backed militants agreed to cease attacks against American vessels in the Red Sea, President Trump and Omani mediators said Tuesday.

    Mr. Trump broke the news of the truce during an unrelated Oval Office meeting with Canada’s prime minister, surprising even his own Pentagon officials.

    “They just don’t want to fight,” Mr. Trump said. “And we will honor that and we will stop the bombings. They have capitulated, but more importantly, we will take their word. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore.”

    But despite his claim of success, it remained unclear whether the United States had achieved its objective of stopping the Houthis from impeding international shipping after a costly seven-week bombing campaign.

    The Houthis themselves stopped short of declaring a full cease-fire, saying that they would continue to fight Israel. And Houthi officials and supporters swiftly portrayed the deal as a major victory for the militia and a failure for Mr. Trump, spreading a social media hashtag that read “Yemen defeats America.”

    For more than a year, the Houthis have been firing projectiles and launching drones at commercial and military ships in the Red Sea in what the militia group has described as a show of solidarity with Gaza residents and with Hamas, the militant group controlling the Palestinian territory.

    In mid-March, the United States began striking hundreds of targets to try to reopen international shipping lanes. The campaign has cost well over $1 billion, congressional officials said they learned in closed-door briefings with Pentagon officials last month. The rate of munitions used in the campaign has caused concern among some U.S. military strategists, who are worried it could undermine readiness for a potential conflict with China.

    After Mr. Trump unexpectedly broke the news of the deal between the Houthis and the United States, Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, said his country had mediated the agreement.

    “In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping,” he said in a statement on social media.

    For his part, Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi politician, said that if the United States halted its attacks on Yemen, the Houthis would halt their attacks on a smaller group: “American military fleets and interests.”

    However, Mr. Al-Bukhaiti said the Houthis would continue military operations until Israel lifted its siege on Gaza, “no matter the sacrifices, even if we have to fight until Judgment Day.”

    His statement left unclear whether the Houthis would stop attacking other vessels in the crucial shipping lane. The Houthis have said that they were targeting only ships with links to Israel or the United States, but the militia has in the past targeted vessels with no obvious link to either. In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Al-Bukhaiti did not answer specific questions as to whether the group would continue to attack Israeli-linked ships.

    Mahdi al-Mashat, another senior Houthi official, made clear the group intended to retaliate against Israel for its bombing of the main international airport in Yemen on Tuesday. Mr. al-Mashat said the response from the Houthis would be “earth-shattering, painful, and beyond the capability of the Israeli and American enemy to bear.”

    Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, a senior member of the group, also described Mr. Trump’s announcement as a “victory” for the Houthis, implying in a social media post that the agreement meant that the United States was no longer supporting Israel’s battle against the Houthis.

    The U.S. Central Command, responsible for operations against the Houthis, referred questions about the agreement to the White House. The White House declined to elaborate on Mr. Trump’s remarks or respond to inquiries about what the administration would do if the Houthis continued strikes against Israeli vessels.

    Mr. Trump, who is prone to make offhand remarks that can upend foreign policy, appeared to catch his own Defense Department off guard. Three Pentagon officials said Tuesday afternoon that the military had yet to receive word from the White House to end its offensive operations against the Houthis. The officials were scrambling to figure out how Mr. Trump’s announcement had changed military policy.

    The new U.S. truce with the Iranian-backed militants comes as American officials are working to negotiate a deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and the agreement with the Houthis could play a role in those broader discussions.

    Two Iranian officials said on Tuesday that Iran used its influence with the Houthis as part of Oman’s effort to broker a cease-fire and get them to stop firing on U.S. ships. The officials, one in the foreign ministry and one with the Revolutionary Guards, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

    The Houthis receive weapons and funding from Iran, and are part of a network of what is regionally known as Iran’s axis of resistance. A recent social media post by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened action on Iran over Houthi attacks on American ships.

    For the past few weeks, Iranian officials have publicly distanced themselves from the Houthis, saying Iran has no control over the group and that their actions are a response to the war in Gaza. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in mid-March that “Houthis act independently based on their own interests and personal views,” and denied Iran had any proxy militia in the region.

    Ahmad Zeidabadi, a prominent reformist analyst, wrote on social media that the cease-fire news between the United States and Houthis was “the best news for him” and the worst news for hard-liners in Iran who support proxy militias in the region.

    Still, national security experts cast doubt that an agreement would lead to a long-term cessation of attacks in the Red Sea. Mr. Trump’s announcement came just hours after the Houthis released a statement that said it was fighting a “holy war in aid of the wronged Palestinian people in Gaza” and confronting an “Israeli-American-British” enemy.

    The Houthis have described their attacks as an attempt to pressure Israel into increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, where more than two million Palestinians have struggled to obtain food and water — a blockade that has only deepened recently.

    Palestinians in Gaza have been under siege by Israel since Hamas carried out a deadly attack in southern Israel in October 2023 and took hostages. Israeli and Houthi forces have also conducted strikes against each other.

    “I would anticipate the Houthis will continue to look to strike Israel, as well as what the group calls ‘Israeli-linked’ ships in the Red Sea,” said Gregory Johnsen, a former member of the U.N. Security Council’s Panel of Experts on Yemen. “If that happens, what does the U.S. do: restart the strikes or let Israel deal with the Houthis?”

    He also expressed skepticism that the commercial shipping industry would return to the Red Sea en masse, given that the Houthis “haven’t been defeated or degraded to the point that they can’t carry out these attacks.”

    “They’ve only promised not to, and whether or not the shipping industry is willing to take the Houthis word for it remains to be seen,” he said.

  • Dozens of individuals were reportedly killed in a U.S. strike in Yemen, targeting what appeared to be a detention center, according to visual reports

    Dozens of individuals were reportedly killed in a U.S. strike in Yemen, targeting what appeared to be a detention center, according to visual reports

    A U.S. airstrike in Yemen on Monday appears to have killed at least three dozen people in a Houthi-run compound that human rights researchers say has been used for years as a detention center and at times for military purposes, according to images of the aftermath reviewed by The Washington Post.

    Houthi rebels say at least 68 people were killed and dozens more were injured in what they said was a U.S. strike on a prison holding African migrants. The Post’s analysis of visuals found at least 38 people who appeared to be dead and 32 injured, numbers that are almost certainly an undercount given the limited available imagery.

    It is not clear from the videos who among the dead are civilians; no military equipment or garb is visible in any visuals reviewed by The Post. Visuals could be located from only one of the two buildings that were destroyed in the attack.

    The Houthis have targeted American military forces in the Red Sea, as well as commercial vessels and Israeli military sites to protest the ongoing war in Gaza, which has killed many thousands of civilians. In mid-March, the Trump campaign launched “Operation Rough Rider,” targeting Houthi rebel leadership and infrastructure.

    Central Command, which oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East, has not said what it was targeting in the recent strike but is “aware of the claims of civilian casualties” and is assessing them, a defense official has said. The U.S. military has said its Yemen operations are executed with “detailed and comprehensive intelligence” to minimize risk to civilians.

    The current functions of the compound in northwest Yemen could not be independently determined. The United Nations has described it as having once included a military barracks and more recently as a migrant detention center. One human rights researcher told The Post that it ceased serving military purposes a decade ago, while another said it is used by the Houthis for other purposes and “the migrants are only a front.”

    Analysts and current and former U.S. officials said the strike appears to add to mounting evidence that the Trump administration has not prioritized minimizing civilian casualties in its ongoing air campaign against the Houthis. The Defense Department is moving to dismantle efforts focused on reducing civilian harm in U.S. military operations, The Post has reported, so commanders can focus more on “lethality”when conducting military strikes.

    “This strike in particular and the campaign in Yemen in general clearly show a higher tolerance for civilian casualties than previously seen in Yemen and even in the wars against ISIS,” a U.S. official familiar with the campaign said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations. The same official confirmed that Monday’s strike was carried out by the United States.

    The videos provide a graphic view of the carnage. “I’m dying now,” one man tells the person filming the video, his body pinned between two slabs of concrete. Dozens of people are crushed by debris, their limbs protruding from the dust. Some are dismembered in the blast. Other remains are likely buried or in parts of the building not visible in the imagery.

    Emergency workers sift through the debris, looking for survivors among scattered mattresses, clothes and plastic bowls. The videos and photos were released either by Houthi-owned channels or journalists subject to strict Houthi oversight.

    Satellite imagery taken after the strike in the southwest outskirts of the city of Saada shows two large buildings destroyed inside a walled compound occupying about 50 acres, known as Saada City Remand Prison. Both buildings are similar in design and about 120 feet long and just over 500 feet apart, separated by a road.

    Screenshot 2025 05 06 at 12.25.28 AM

    Other buildings in the same compound were struck in January 2022 by Saudi forces, killing at least 91 detainees and wounding at least 236, according to the U.N. human rights office. At the time, the compound held 1,300 pre-trial detainees and 700 migrants, the U.N. said. It was one of the deadliest strikes of a years-long Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis, which received substantial U.S. assistance.

    After the 2022 attack, a Saudi military spokesman said the site was a legitimate target because it was used by the Houthis for military purposes.

    Houthi militants used the detention center in northwestern Yemen for military purposes up until 2015 or 2016, when it was converted to a prison, said a Yemen human rights researcher who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The other Yemen-based researcher, Adnan Al-Gabarni, called the compound an important site and said much is unknown about it.

    Representatives from the International Committee for the Red Cross have conducted regular visits to the prison complex since 2018; they declined to comment on the internal conditions of the facility. Visiting the site after the Saudi strike, U.N. human rights representatives said in a report that they saw no signs the compound had a military function.

    The Saudi bombing had “catastrophic results for vulnerable migrants being detained by the Houthis,” said Christopher Le Mon, former deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the Biden administration. Speaking about the U.S. military, he said, “It’s just inconceivable that the military wouldn’t have anticipated a serious risk of civilian casualties.”

    An ICRC delegation visited the site on Monday following the strike. The ICRC said teams from the Yemen Red Crescent Society had evacuated wounded migrants to two hospitals nearby.

    Travelers from African countries have transited through the desert corridor for decades, according to a 2023 Human Rights Watch report, which estimated that more than 90 percent of those en route to Saudi Arabia come from Ethiopia. They have been routinely detained by Houthi forces, who are under increasing pressure from Saudi authorities to stop illegal migration, and often subjected to torture and abuse while detained at centers like the one in Saada, according to the rights monitor.

    “African migrants locked up in a prison in northern Yemen are not a lawful military objective,” said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department, noting that the U.S. military has not publicly identified what its target was or whether it was a mistake.

    The number of civilians killed in Yemen has exponentially increased in the weeks since the campaign began. According to Airwars, a Britain-based watchdog organization, U.S. strikes were estimated to have killed 27 to 56 Yemeni civilians in March. The nonprofit Yemen Data Project estimates that at least 97 strikes in March killed 28 people and wounded 66. The casualty toll in April to date is believed to be much higher.

    The Houthis said more than 70 people were killed by an airstrike on a Houthi-controlled oil port on April 18.

    After Monday’s strike, video released by the Houthi-owned al-Masirah television channel showed remnants of munitions and what appeared to be at least two craters where the building once stood. The visual evidence indicates multiple U.S.-manufactured GBU-39s were dropped, said Trevor Ball, a former Army explosive ordnance disposal technician. The guided munitions are designed to be capable of reducing risk to civilians with precision targeting and a relatively small size.

    Screenshot 2025 05 06 at 12.27.22 AM
    Photo from the scene of the strike published by Yemen’s Mine Action Program, YEMAC, shows fragments of U.S.-made GBU-39 bombs, according to weapons expert Trevor Ball. At least two fuze wells indicate at least two munitions were used.

    There are no clear signs in the images that the damaged building had any military use, Ball said. The foundation is basic concrete, and the inside appeared to be sleeping quarters.

    Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Tuesday the U.S. has struck 1,000 targets, or about 23 per day, since March 15. That pace has raised questions among some experts about whether commanders and analysts can properly assess targets.

    “They’ve had some questionable strikes already, and with the operation tempo, chance of mistakes and shortcuts are just going to increase,” Ball said.

    Democratic lawmakers last week said they were alarmed by what they called an apparent “serious disregard” for innocent life following reports of deaths in other strikes.