According to U.S. officials, the attack hit a dozen locations in Yemen.
Continuing a series of attacks against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the U.S. military launched another round of missiles from its ships and submarines on Wednesday, according to multiple U.S. officials.
This was the fourth time in a span of days that the U.S. directly targeted the group, which controls large parts of the war-torn country.
The officials, who requested anonymity to share information that was not yet public, said that the missiles were fired from the Red Sea and hit over a dozen locations.
The attacks came after the U.S. officially designated the Houthis as a global terrorist organization on Wednesday. The designation imposes sanctions that aim to cut off the extremist group from its financial sources.
The Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported on the messaging app Telegram that the U.S. strikes hit the governorates of Dhamar, Hodieda, Taiz, al-Bayda and Saada. The Houthis, however, have not stopped their campaign of harassing commercial and military vessels in the region, despite the sanctions and the military strikes.
On Friday, the U.S. and Britain conducted a joint operation that hit more than 60 Houthi targets across Yemen with warships and warplanes.
On Wednesday, a Houthi drone attacked the M/V Genco Picardy, a U.S.-owned and -operated ship that flies the flag of the Marshall Islands, in the Gulf of Aden.
The U.S. has also issued a strong warning to Iran to stop supplying weapons to the Houthis. On Thursday, the U.S. seized ballistic missile parts that it said Iran was sending to Yemen on a dhow, a traditional sailing vessel.
The operation resulted in the loss of two U.S. Navy SEALs, who fell into the water after a wave hit the dhow. One of them was overcome by the wave and the other jumped in to rescue him. Both are still missing.
Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said on Wednesday that the U.S. would continue to take military action to prevent more attacks by the Houthis. “They are exploiting this situation to conduct attacks against the ships and vessels from more than 50 countries … around the world. And so we’re going to continue to work with our partners in the region to prevent those attacks or deter those attacks in the future,” Ryder said.
The Houthis have launched several attacks since the Friday joint operation. They fired an anti-ship cruise missile at a U.S. Navy destroyer over the weekend, but the ship intercepted it. They also hit a U.S.-owned ship in the Gulf of Aden on Monday and a Malta-flagged bulk carrier in the Red Sea on Tuesday.
The U.S. responded on Tuesday by destroying four anti-ship ballistic missiles that the Houthis had readied to launch and that posed an imminent threat to merchant and U.S. Navy ships in the area.
The Houthis later claimed responsibility for the attack on the Malta-flagged bulk carrier Zografia. The ship was damaged, but no one was hurt and it proceeded on its course.
