US strikes on Yemen intended to "restore stability in the Red Sea," says US Ambassador to UN
From CNN’s Mariya Knight and Richard Roth
At the United Nations Security Council, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield defended US military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, saying the strikes were carried out "to restore stability in the Red Sea, while upholding the fundamental principles of freedom of navigation.”
Thomas-Greenfield said Friday the US has no desire to see more conflict in the region but reiterated that “attacks on any vessels in the Red Sea, regardless of origin or ownership, are entirely unacceptable.”
She also said that despite claims to the contrary, “most of the vessels the Houthis have attacked have nothing to do with Israel.”
She called on members of the UN to demand Iran-backed Houthi rebels cease attacks on vessels, ensuring the safe release of all the crews and ships that are still being held.
14 min ago
Strike on Houthi radar site was carried out by US warship USS Carney with Tomahawk missiles
From CNN's Mary Kay Mallonee
The strike against a Houthi radar site in Yemen on Saturday morning local time was carried out by US warship USS Carney using Tomahawk missiles, US Central Command says.
The strike was “a follow-on action on a specific military target associated with strikes taken on January 12, designed to degrade the Houthi’s ability to attack maritime vessels, including commercial vessels,” CENTCOM said in a statement.
The Houthis has been firing at commercial vessels crossing Red Sea, which they say are revenge against Israel for its military campaign in Gaza. But on Thursday, the US and UK struck back at Houthi sites in an attempt to disrupt their ability to fire upon international shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
14 min ago
Houthi's Al-Masirah TV reports "number of airstrikes" targeting Yemen's Sanaa
From CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq
A Houthi-run television channel is reporting that airstrikes have hit Yemen's capital, Sanaa.
“The American-British enemy is targeting the capital, Sanaa, with a number of airstrikes,” the Houthi-run Al-Masirah news network announced early on Saturday, local time.
People living in the Yemeni capital took to social media to report hearing several loud explosions.
22 min ago
US carries out fresh strikes against Houthis in Yemen one day after hitting nearly 30 locations
From CNN's Oren Liebermann
The US carried out further strikes against Houthi locations in Yemen, according to a US official, one day after launching a coordinated multi-nation attack on nearly 30 Houthi positions.
The additional strikes carried out Friday night (Eastern Time) were much smaller in scope than the previous night. They targeted a radar facility used by the Houthis, the official said.
The Houthis had fired at least one anti-ship ballistic missile towards a commercial vessel earlier Friday.
On Thursday, the US and UK struck 28 separate Houthi sites in an attempt to disrupt their ability to fire upon international shipping lanes in the Red Sea. The two countries were also backed by Canada, Australia, Bahrain, and the Netherlands.
The latest strike was carried out unilaterally by the United States, the official said.
The US had threatened the possibility of additional military action if the Houthis continued to launch drone and missile attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
“We will make sure we respond to the Houthis if they continue this outrageous behavior along with our allies,” US President Joe Biden said Friday while in Pennsylvania.
But after the US-led strikes, the Iran-backed rebel group launched another anti-ship ballistic missile towards a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden, south of Yemen.
The new strikes also come after the White House said it was trying to avoid an escalation.
“Everything we're doing, everything we're trying to do is to prevent any further escalation,” John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council, told CNN Friday.
The set of US-led strikes on Thursday evening targeted radar facilities and command and control nodes, as well as facilities used for the storage and launch of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. These are the primary weapons the Houthis have used to target commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The attacks killed five people and wounded six more, according to a spokesman for the Houthi military.
The Houthis vowed that their forces would respond to the attack, calling US and UK assets “legitimate targets.”
Scenes of "utter horror" in northern Gaza with corpses left on streets and people starving, UN says
From CNN's Radina Gigova in London
Palestinians wait to collect food at a donation point in a refugee camp in Rafah, southern Gaza, on December 23, 2023. Saher Alghorra/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images
Martin Griffiths, the man in charge of the UN’s relief operations in Gaza, has painted a dire picture of conditions in the strip, saying his colleagues have witnessed "scenes of utter horror."
"Corpses left lying in the road. People with evident signs of starvation stopping trucks in search of anything they can get to survive," Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
Griffiths said many people no longer had homes to return to, with shelters in the enclave housing far more people than they could cope with.
Food and water was running out and the risk of famine was growing by the day, he added.
The health system, he said, was "in a state of collapse," where women were unable to give birth safely, children could not get vaccinated, infectious diseases were on the rise and people had been seeking shelter in hospital yards.
In a stinging criticism, Griffiths said his team's efforts to send humanitarian convoys to the north have been met with delays and denials amid impossible conditions, with the safety of aid workers being put in danger.
"Orders for evacuation are unrelenting. As ground operations move southwards, aerial bombardments have intensified in areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety," Griffiths said of Israel's evacuation policies. "There is no safe place in Gaza. Dignified human life is a near impossibility," he said.
But the UN humanitarian chief also urged people not to forget "the 1,200 people killed, thousands injured, and hundreds taken in the brutal attack by Hamas and other armed groups on Israel on October 7, and the accounts of abhorrent sexual violence."
"What we have seen since October 7 is a stain on our collective conscience. Unless we act, it will become an indelible mark on our humanity," Griffiths said.
US rejects calls for resettlement of Palestinians out of Gaza, US Ambassador to the UN says
From CNN's Richard Roth
Palestinians walk amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City following weeks of Israeli bombardment, as a four-day ceasefire took effect on November 24, 2023. Omar El-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images/File
The United States said it unequivocally rejects statements made by Israeli ministers and lawmakers calling for the resettlement of Palestinians out of Gaza, said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US Ambassador to the United Nations.
The ambassador said during a UN Security Council briefing on the Middle East Friday that civilians must not be pressed to leave Gaza, and that such statements are “irresponsible” and “inflammatory,” along with other statements by some Israeli officials calling for the destruction of Gaza and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees.
Thomas-Greenfield said that while such statements send the wrong message, “so too do the words we are not hearing from this Council.”
The ambassador went on to question why some council members still haven't condemned Hamas' October 7 attack and why some "stopped talking about the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza."
The ambassador also said that while the Security Council focuses on Gaza, violence in the occupied West Bank must not be overlooked.
At least 340 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israelis in the past three months, the ambassador said. The US condemns these attacks, the ambassador asserted.
She said the Palestinian Authority (PA) must take steps to reform and revitalize PA Security Forces, which stability in the “occupied” West Bank depends on. She added that this “means Israel must release revenue that allows the PA to pay their security forces.”
The ambassador said the US is working towards a vision “where Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side in peace with equal measures of security, freedom, and dignity” adding, “this is the only way forward.”
14 min ago
Senior Houthi leader urges US and UK to withdraw from Red Sea, saying "we did not attack American shores"
From CNN's Hamdi Alkhshali
Mohammad Ali al-Houthi, Yemeni politician and former head of the Houthi revolutionary council, takes part in a protest following US and British forces strikes, in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa, Yemen, on January 12. Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the Houthis Supreme Revolutionary Committee, urged the Americans and the British to "go back to your country" and focus on addressing racism rather than protecting Israeli ships.
Al-Houthi criticized the US and UK for their "aggression" in launching the Thursday airstrikes during a speech addressed to a large protest in Yemen's capital Sanaa against the strikes.
He also advised the countries to heed a recent warning from Houthi movement leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi when he said that any attack on Yemen would be met with a robust response.
Rejecting the American claim that the strikes were launched on Yemen in "self-defense," Al-Houthi argued, "we did not attack American shores, we did not reach the shores of Florida, we did not attack the American islands."
"You are the Nazis, and your strikes on our country are acts of terrorism," Al-Houthi said.
He accused the US and the UK of being deviants and supporters of deviation, asserting that they are not allies of humanity. Al-Houthi further criticized Americans for threatening navigation security and actively working to raise maritime insurance prices.
He labeled America as an enemy of the people, describing it as a source of terrorism.
Massive crowds of people gathered in the Yemeni capital Friday, holding Palestinian flags and protesting after the US and UK launched airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. Protesters were heard chanting "God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam."
23 min ago
Nearly 30 locations were hit in US-UK strikes on Houthis and a battle damage assessment is ongoing
From CNN's Haley Britzky
The joint strike on Houthi targets Thursday evening hit nearly 30 locations, which may have had “multiple items” hit at each location, according to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lt. Gen. Dougals Sims II.
“So the original strikes were against 16 separate locations. Each of those locations contained a number of different items … Subsequent or immediately following those strikes, there were 12 other locations that had been identified as possessing articles that could be potentially used against forces — maritime and air — those areas were also they were subsequently struck. Again, those 12 locations consisted of multiple items,” Sims said Friday.
He went on to say that there were "just over 150 various munitions used."
“Those munitions came from both maritime platforms as well as air platforms, either British or US in the air,” Sims II added.
US Air Forces Central previously said in a press release that more than 60 targets at 16 locations were hit in the strikes.
Sims later added that it was a “near immediate” decision to strike the other 12 sites after they were identified to have “the ability to influence our maritime or air forces.”
The battle damage assessment is still ongoing of the various targets, he said, but officials feel “very confident about where our munitions struck.”
12 min ago
Biden administration reevaluating designating Houthis as terrorist organization
From CNN's Kevin Liptak
Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in Gaza, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, on December 2, 2023. Khaled Abdullah/Reuters/File
President Joe Biden says he believes the Houthis are a “terrorist group,” a designation his administration lifted on the organization but is considering reapplying.
“I think they are,” Biden said when asked if he was willing to call the Houthis a terrorist group.
Biden later told reporters in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that it is irrelevant whether his administration formally makes that designation. He said the US and other nations would respond anyway to their attacks in the Red Sea.
"It’s irrelevant whether they’re designated," Biden said. "We’ve put together a group of nations that are going to say if they continue to act and behave as they do, we’ll respond," he added.
Questioned about some Democrats who said he should have sought Congressional approval for the strikes, Biden rejected their objections outright.
"They’re wrong and I sent up this morning when the strikes occurred exactly what happened," he said
Some background: In 2021, the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration's eleventh-hour decision to designate Yemen's Houthi rebels as a foreign terrorist organization.
Earlier Friday, the White House reiterated it was reviewing a terror designation for the Houthis. John Kirby, the national security council spokesperson, said no decisions had been made and couldn’t provide a timeline for how long the review would take.
This post was updated with more of Biden comments.
Iranian-backed Houthi militants warned they would retaliate after the US and UK launched strikes against the group in Yemen, as tensions sparked by Israel's war in Gaza spread to a new arena. The strikes were a response to the Houthis' attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
The US and UK struck 28 Houthi sites in the first batch of strikes. Early on Saturday, Yemen time, the US carried out fresh strikes, using Tomahawk missiles, that targeted a radar facility.
The escalation comes as world leaders try to keep the Israel-Hamas war from spilling into a wider regional conflict involving Iran's proxies, including the Houthis and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel has hit back against a genocide case brought by South Africa to the UN's top court, saying the claims presented a "grossly distorted story." Its lawyers argued that if genocide had been committed, it was against Israel during the October 7 attacks.
A CNN investigation has found at least 20 out of 22 hospitals in northern Gaza were damaged or destroyed in the first two months of the war — with 14 being directly hit.
At the United Nations Security Council, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield defended US military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, saying the strikes were carried out "to restore stability in the Red Sea, while upholding the fundamental principles of freedom of navigation.”
Thomas-Greenfield said Friday the US has no desire to see more conflict in the region but reiterated that “attacks on any vessels in the Red Sea, regardless of origin or ownership, are entirely unacceptable.”
She also said that despite claims to the contrary, “most of the vessels the Houthis have attacked have nothing to do with Israel.”
She called on members of the UN to demand Iran-backed Houthi rebels cease attacks on vessels, ensuring the safe release of all the crews and ships that are still being held.
The strike against a Houthi radar site in Yemen on Saturday morning local time was carried out by US warship USS Carney using Tomahawk missiles, US Central Command says.
The strike was “a follow-on action on a specific military target associated with strikes taken on January 12, designed to degrade the Houthi’s ability to attack maritime vessels, including commercial vessels,” CENTCOM said in a statement.
The Houthis has been firing at commercial vessels crossing Red Sea, which they say are revenge against Israel for its military campaign in Gaza. But on Thursday, the US and UK struck back at Houthi sites in an attempt to disrupt their ability to fire upon international shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
A Houthi-run television channel is reporting that airstrikes have hit Yemen's capital, Sanaa.
“The American-British enemy is targeting the capital, Sanaa, with a number of airstrikes,” the Houthi-run Al-Masirah news network announced early on Saturday, local time.
People living in the Yemeni capital took to social media to report hearing several loud explosions.
The US carried out further strikes against Houthi locations in Yemen, according to a US official, one day after launching a coordinated multi-nation attack on nearly 30 Houthi positions.
The additional strikes carried out Friday night (Eastern Time) were much smaller in scope than the previous night. They targeted a radar facility used by the Houthis, the official said.
The Houthis had fired at least one anti-ship ballistic missile towards a commercial vessel earlier Friday.
On Thursday, the US and UK struck 28 separate Houthi sites in an attempt to disrupt their ability to fire upon international shipping lanes in the Red Sea. The two countries were also backed by Canada, Australia, Bahrain, and the Netherlands.
The latest strike was carried out unilaterally by the United States, the official said.
The US had threatened the possibility of additional military action if the Houthis continued to launch drone and missile attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
“We will make sure we respond to the Houthis if they continue this outrageous behavior along with our allies,” US President Joe Biden said Friday while in Pennsylvania.
But after the US-led strikes, the Iran-backed rebel group launched another anti-ship ballistic missile towards a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden, south of Yemen.
The new strikes also come after the White House said it was trying to avoid an escalation.
“Everything we're doing, everything we're trying to do is to prevent any further escalation,” John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council, told CNN Friday.
The set of US-led strikes on Thursday evening targeted radar facilities and command and control nodes, as well as facilities used for the storage and launch of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. These are the primary weapons the Houthis have used to target commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The attacks killed five people and wounded six more, according to a spokesman for the Houthi military.
The Houthis vowed that their forces would respond to the attack, calling US and UK assets “legitimate targets.”
Palestinians wait to collect food at a donation point in a refugee camp in Rafah, southern Gaza, on December 23, 2023. Saher Alghorra/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images
Martin Griffiths, the man in charge of the UN’s relief operations in Gaza, has painted a dire picture of conditions in the strip, saying his colleagues have witnessed "scenes of utter horror."
"Corpses left lying in the road. People with evident signs of starvation stopping trucks in search of anything they can get to survive," Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
Griffiths said many people no longer had homes to return to, with shelters in the enclave housing far more people than they could cope with.
Food and water was running out and the risk of famine was growing by the day, he added.
The health system, he said, was "in a state of collapse," where women were unable to give birth safely, children could not get vaccinated, infectious diseases were on the rise and people had been seeking shelter in hospital yards.
In a stinging criticism, Griffiths said his team's efforts to send humanitarian convoys to the north have been met with delays and denials amid impossible conditions, with the safety of aid workers being put in danger.
"Orders for evacuation are unrelenting. As ground operations move southwards, aerial bombardments have intensified in areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety," Griffiths said of Israel's evacuation policies. "There is no safe place in Gaza. Dignified human life is a near impossibility," he said.
But the UN humanitarian chief also urged people not to forget "the 1,200 people killed, thousands injured, and hundreds taken in the brutal attack by Hamas and other armed groups on Israel on October 7, and the accounts of abhorrent sexual violence."
"What we have seen since October 7 is a stain on our collective conscience. Unless we act, it will become an indelible mark on our humanity," Griffiths said.
Palestinians walk amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City following weeks of Israeli bombardment, as a four-day ceasefire took effect on November 24, 2023. Omar El-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images/File
The United States said it unequivocally rejects statements made by Israeli ministers and lawmakers calling for the resettlement of Palestinians out of Gaza, said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US Ambassador to the United Nations.
The ambassador said during a UN Security Council briefing on the Middle East Friday that civilians must not be pressed to leave Gaza, and that such statements are “irresponsible” and “inflammatory,” along with other statements by some Israeli officials calling for the destruction of Gaza and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees.
Thomas-Greenfield said that while such statements send the wrong message, “so too do the words we are not hearing from this Council.”
The ambassador went on to question why some council members still haven't condemned Hamas' October 7 attack and why some "stopped talking about the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza."
The ambassador also said that while the Security Council focuses on Gaza, violence in the occupied West Bank must not be overlooked.
At least 340 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israelis in the past three months, the ambassador said. The US condemns these attacks, the ambassador asserted.
She said the Palestinian Authority (PA) must take steps to reform and revitalize PA Security Forces, which stability in the “occupied” West Bank depends on. She added that this “means Israel must release revenue that allows the PA to pay their security forces.”
The ambassador said the US is working towards a vision “where Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side in peace with equal measures of security, freedom, and dignity” adding, “this is the only way forward.”
Mohammad Ali al-Houthi, Yemeni politician and former head of the Houthi revolutionary council, takes part in a protest following US and British forces strikes, in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa, Yemen, on January 12. Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the Houthis Supreme Revolutionary Committee, urged the Americans and the British to "go back to your country" and focus on addressing racism rather than protecting Israeli ships.
Al-Houthi criticized the US and UK for their "aggression" in launching the Thursday airstrikes during a speech addressed to a large protest in Yemen's capital Sanaa against the strikes.
He also advised the countries to heed a recent warning from Houthi movement leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi when he said that any attack on Yemen would be met with a robust response.
Rejecting the American claim that the strikes were launched on Yemen in "self-defense," Al-Houthi argued, "we did not attack American shores, we did not reach the shores of Florida, we did not attack the American islands."
"You are the Nazis, and your strikes on our country are acts of terrorism," Al-Houthi said.
He accused the US and the UK of being deviants and supporters of deviation, asserting that they are not allies of humanity. Al-Houthi further criticized Americans for threatening navigation security and actively working to raise maritime insurance prices.
He labeled America as an enemy of the people, describing it as a source of terrorism.
Massive crowds of people gathered in the Yemeni capital Friday, holding Palestinian flags and protesting after the US and UK launched airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. Protesters were heard chanting "God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam."
The joint strike on Houthi targets Thursday evening hit nearly 30 locations, which may have had “multiple items” hit at each location, according to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lt. Gen. Dougals Sims II.
“So the original strikes were against 16 separate locations. Each of those locations contained a number of different items … Subsequent or immediately following those strikes, there were 12 other locations that had been identified as possessing articles that could be potentially used against forces — maritime and air — those areas were also they were subsequently struck. Again, those 12 locations consisted of multiple items,” Sims said Friday.
He went on to say that there were "just over 150 various munitions used."
“Those munitions came from both maritime platforms as well as air platforms, either British or US in the air,” Sims II added.
US Air Forces Central previously said in a press release that more than 60 targets at 16 locations were hit in the strikes.
Sims later added that it was a “near immediate” decision to strike the other 12 sites after they were identified to have “the ability to influence our maritime or air forces.”
The battle damage assessment is still ongoing of the various targets, he said, but officials feel “very confident about where our munitions struck.”
Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in Gaza, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, on December 2, 2023. Khaled Abdullah/Reuters/File
President Joe Biden says he believes the Houthis are a “terrorist group,” a designation his administration lifted on the organization but is considering reapplying.
“I think they are,” Biden said when asked if he was willing to call the Houthis a terrorist group.
Biden later told reporters in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that it is irrelevant whether his administration formally makes that designation. He said the US and other nations would respond anyway to their attacks in the Red Sea.
"It’s irrelevant whether they’re designated," Biden said. "We’ve put together a group of nations that are going to say if they continue to act and behave as they do, we’ll respond," he added.
Questioned about some Democrats who said he should have sought Congressional approval for the strikes, Biden rejected their objections outright.
"They’re wrong and I sent up this morning when the strikes occurred exactly what happened," he said
Some background: In 2021, the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration's eleventh-hour decision to designate Yemen's Houthi rebels as a foreign terrorist organization.
Earlier Friday, the White House reiterated it was reviewing a terror designation for the Houthis. John Kirby, the national security council spokesperson, said no decisions had been made and couldn’t provide a timeline for how long the review would take.
This post was updated with more of Biden comments.
