DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan 12: U.S.-led airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels in response to their attacks on Red Sea shipping pulled the world’s focus Friday back on the yearslong war raging there, even as tensions rise across a Middle East already torn by Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The strikes killed at least five people and wounded six, the Houthis said, without elaborating on what was targeted.

As the bombing lit the predawn sky over multiple sites held by the Iranian-backed rebels, Saudi Arabia quickly sought to distance itself from the attacks as it seeks to maintain a delicate détente with Iran and a cease-fire in the Yemen war from which it hopes to finally withdraw.

The attack also threatened to ignite a regional conflict over Israel’s war on Hamas, which the Biden administration and its allies have been trying to calm for weeks.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy acknowledged an attack days earlier on a ship in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean — an attack that may signal Iran’s willingness to strike vessels as part of a wider maritime campaign over the Israel-Hamas conflict. Tehran on Thursday separately seized another tanker involved in an earlier crisis over America seizing oil targeted by international sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

It remained unclear how extensive the damage from the U.S. strikes were, though the Houthis said at least five sites, including airfields, had been attacked. The United Kingdom described its strikes hitting a site in Bani allegedly used by the Houthis to launch drones and an airfield in Abbs used to launch cruise missiles and drones.

Hussein al-Ezzi, a Houthi official in their Foreign Ministry, acknowledged “a massive aggressive attack by American and British ships, submarines and warplanes.”

“America and Britain will undoubtedly have to prepare to pay a heavy price and bear all the dire consequences of this blatant aggression,” al-Ezzi wrote online.

Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Houthis’ chief negotiator and spokesperson, separately described the U.S. and Britain as having “committed foolishness with this treacherous aggression.”

“They were wrong if they thought that they would deter Yemen from supporting Palestine and Gaza,” he wrote online. Houthi “targeting will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine,” he wrote.

Since the attacks began in November, however, the Houthis have begun targeting vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, imperiling shipping in a key route for global trade.

 
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