U.S. Leads Second Strike Against Houthis in Yemen, as Conflict Escalates

WASHINGTON — The United States carried out another strike against the Houthi militia in Yemen, U.S. Central Command said Friday night, bombing a radar facility as part of an effort to further degrade the Iran-backed group’s ability to attack ships transiting the Red Sea.

It was the second straight day that the U.S. military fired on a Houthi target, after a U.S.-led barrage of military strikes early Friday local time that was aimed at securing critical shipping routes between Europe and Asia. The strikes come amid fears of a wider escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.

The strike, carried out at 3:45 a.m. Saturday local time by the USS Carney using Tomahawk missiles, was “a follow-on action on a specific military target,” Central Command said in a statement posted on social media. A Pentagon official said Friday night that the strike was meant to further the job begun by the widespread coordinated air and naval assault on a number of Houthi targets in Yemen the night before.

Houthi forces in Yemen vowed earlier Friday to retaliate for the previous strikes, which involved missiles and warplanes launched by the United States and Britain, and came in response to intensifying attacks on commercial vessels and warships in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi militia, which has said it was acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas.

A military spokesperson for the Houthis, Yahya Saree, said in a post on social media that the U.S.-led strikes would “not go unanswered and unpunished.” He said the strikes had killed at least five members of the Houthi forces, an armed group that controls northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa.

U.S. and British forces fired more than 150 missiles and bombs at several dozen targets in Yemen, chosen specifically to damage the Houthis’ ability to imperil shipping — weapons storage areas, radars, and missile and drone launch sites — U.S. officials said. It was the first Western assault after repeated warnings by the United States and its allies that the Houthis and Iran must halt the attacks at sea or face consequences, only to see them increase.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said Friday that the attacks, ordered by President Joe Biden, had not been intended to ignite a wider regional war. Kirby said that everything that the United States hit was a “valid, legitimate military target.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .