Dozens killed in US strike on Yemeni oil port, Houthis say
Dozens of people were killed in U.S. airstrikes on a Yemeni oil port on Friday, Yemeni officials said after the U.S. military reported attacking the facility in the west of the country to “deprive” the government of “illegal revenue.”
Yemen’s Health Ministry, which is controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi movement that took over most of the country a decade ago, said at least 74 people were killed in the attack on the Ras Isa facility. The ministry did not say how many were combatants or civilians.
The Houthis have been attacking ships traversing the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways, in declared solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Both the United States and Britain have launched strikes against the movement, with a major uptick under the Trump administration.
In a statement published late Thursday Yemen time, U.S. Central Command said the Houthis “use fuel to sustain their military operations, as a weapon of control, and to benefit economically from embezzling the profits from the import.”
The strikes were intended to “eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years,” the statement added.
“This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully,” it said. The statement gave no estimate of casualties, and CENTCOM did not immediately respond to queries about the number of dead.
Footage shared on social media by the Houthis’ satellite channel, Al-Masirah, showed fireballs shooting into the night sky and graphic images of dead and injured people.
If the toll is confirmed, it would mark the single-deadliest known attack since President Donald Trump launched a campaign against the Houthis last month.
In mid-March, the United States launched a “decisive and powerful” attack on Houthi targets across Yemen, with Trump writing on social media that the group’s campaign against U.S. vessels “will not be tolerated. We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”
Reuters reported that at least 31 people were killed and 101 injured in strikes in March, citing a spokesman for the Heath Ministry.
Those attacks became mired in controversy after it emerged that the plans were discussed in a chat between top U.S. security officials on the unclassified, commercially available messaging app Signal — and that a U.S. journalist had inadvertently been added to the conversation.
Separately on Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was imposing sanctions on a Yemen-based bank for supporting the Houthis, which the Trump administration re-designated as a foreign terrorist organization in early March.