US strikes kill 31 in Yemen, Houthis vow escalation

Yemen’s Houthi movement said on Sunday it was ready to “meet escalation with escalation” after US strikes targeting the Iran-aligned group over its threat to resume Red Sea shipping attacks triggered a diplomatic backlash from Moscow and Tehran.

The strikes, which killed at least 31 people at the start of a campaign that one US official told media might continue for weeks, are the biggest US military operation in the West Asia since President Donald Trump took office in January.

The US will keep attacking Yemen’s Houthis until they end attacks on shipping, the US defence secretary said.

The Houthis’ political bureau described the attacks as a “war crime”. “Our Yemeni armed forces are fully prepared to respond to escalation with escalation,” it said in a statement.

Trump also warned Iran, the Houthis’ main backer, that it needed to end support for the group immediately.

He said if Iran threatened the United States, “America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”

In response, the top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the Houthis took their own strategic and operational decisions and Tehran would react decisively to any action against it.

“We warn our enemies that Iran will respond decisively and destructively if they take their threats into action,” Hossein Salami told state media.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to urge an “immediate cessation of the use of force and the importance for all sides to engage in political dialogue,” Russia’s foreign ministry said on Sunday.

Lavrov’s call to halt the strikes came as Trump has been pressing Moscow to sign a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, which Ukraine accepted last week, but Russia has said needs to be reworked.

Trump is also trying to bring Tehran to the negotiating table over its nuclear programme, while also ramping up sanctions pressure.

Most of the 31 people confirmed killed in the US strikes were women and children, Anees al-Asbahi, spokesperson for the Houthi-run health ministry said in an updated toll on Sunday.

More than 100 were injured, he said.

Residents in Sanaa said the strikes hit a neighbourhood known to host several members of the Houthi leadership.

At a hospital, medics treated the injured, including children, and the bodies of several casualties, wrapped in plastic sheets, were placed in a yard.

The Houthis had said last week they would resume attacks on Israeli ships passing through Red Sea shipping lanes off Yemen if Israel did not lift a block on aid into Gaza.