- Yemen's Houthis strike at Israel in their first such attack since Iran war start
- Iranian attack on base in Saudi Arabia injures 12 US service personnel
Yemen’s Houthis launched missiles at Israel yesterday, their first such attack since the start of the Iran war, heightening the risk that a conflict now in its fifth week could expand further across the region.
Speaking before the strike, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US expected to conclude military operations within weeks. The Houthis said they would continue their operations until the "aggression” on all fronts ended.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke to Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, whose government hosts a meeting with the Turkish and Saudi foreign ministers today to seek to ease regional tensions.
But there was no sign of an immediate diplomatic breakthrough in a war that has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands and hitting the world economy with the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies.
Israel said it had struck more than 100 targets in Iran since Friday, including ballistic missile production and storage facilities and government infrastructure sites in Tehran.
Iranian state media reported nine people killed in the western city of Borujerd and five killed in Zanjan in the northwest, saying both attacks were on residential areas.
Iran kept up attacks on Israel and several Gulf states after hitting an air base in Saudi Arabia on Friday and wounding 12 US military personnel, two of them seriously, in one of the most serious breaches of US air defences so far.
Drones damaged the radar system at Kuwait’s International Airport, and fires were reported near the Khalifa container port in the United Arab Emirates’ capital Abu Dhabi after a missile was intercepted. In Israel, seven people were hospitalised after an Iranian missile hit the village of Eshtaol, near Jerusalem.
NEW THREAT TO GLOBAL SHIPPING
Israel, which regularly faced missile attacks from the Houthis before the war, confirmed a missile had been fired at it from Yemen. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
The attack pointed to a potential new threat to global shipping, already hit by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.
The Houthis have shown an ability to strike targets far beyond Yemen and disrupt shipping lanes around the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, as they did in support of Hamas in the Gaza war.
If the Houthis open a new front in the conflict, one target could be the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, a chokepoint for sea traffic towards the Suez Canal.
With midterm elections due in November, the increasingly unpopular conflict, launched with US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, has weighed on President Donald Trump’s Republican Party. He has appeared eager to end it soon, while also threatening escalation.
Demonstrators took to city streets across the US yesterday in the third set of "No Kings” rallies, described by organisers as a call to action against the war.
Rubio said on Friday that military operations were expected to be concluded in "weeks, not months” and echoed Trump’s calls on European and Asian countries to help secure free passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
US allies have been reluctant to be drawn into a war which could escalate if Trump decides to deploy ground troops to try to open the strait.
Rubio said the US could achieve its aims without ground troops but acknowledged it was deploying some to the region "to give the president maximum optionality and maximum opportunity to adjust the contingencies, should they emerge”.
Washington has dispatched two contingents of thousands of Marines to the region, the first of which arrived on Friday on a huge amphibious assault ship, the US military said in a social media post yesterday. The Pentagon is also expected to deploy thousands of elite airborne soldiers. Financial markets have reacted with alarm at signs the war may drag on.
The Brent crude oil benchmark is up more than 50% since the war began and in the US, where Trump is politically vulnerable to rising fuel prices, diesel in California hit a record average high, the American Automobile
Association said.