US President Joe Biden has said that attacks on the Houthis will continue even as he acknowledged that the group have not stopped their Red Sea attacks.
The US carried out a fifth round of strikes on Yemen on Thursday after a US ship was struck by a Houthi drone.
White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters that US forces “took out a range of Houthi missiles” that were about to be fired towards the Red Sea.
He said the American attacks took place on Wednesday and again on Thursday.
On Wednesday, a Houthi drone hit a “US owned and operated bulk carrier ship” which later had to be rescued by India’s navy. It came as the US designated the Houthis as a terrorist organisation.
“Well, when you say working are they stopping the Houthis? No,” Mr Biden told reporters in Washington DC on Thursday before he left for a speech in North Carolina.
“Are they gonna continue? Yes.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters that US forces “took out a range of Houthi missiles” that were about to be fired towards the Red Sea.
US Central Command - which oversees US operations in the Middle East - said in a statement that it had “conducted strikes on two Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed into the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch” on Thursday.
“US forces identified the missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen” around 15:40 local time (12:40GMT) “and determined they were an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region”.
Also on Thursday, the leader of the Houthis delivered a fiery hour-long televised speech in which he called it a “great honour” to be “in direct confrontation” with Israel, the US and the UK.
Since then, the group has launched dozens of attacks on commercial tankers passing through the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
The strikes - supported by Australia, Bahrain, the Netherlands and Canada - began after Houthi forces ignored an ultimatum to cease attacks in the region.
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