A ceasefire deal between Yemen’s Houthis and the US does not include sparing Israel, the group said yesterday, suggesting its shipping attacks that have disrupted global trade and challenged world powers will not come to a complete halt.
President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the US would stop bombing the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, saying that the group had agreed to stop attacking US ships.
After Trump made the announcement, Oman said it had mediated the ceasefire deal to halt attacks on US vessels.
There have been no reports of Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea area since January.
“The agreement does not include Israel in any way, shape or form,” Mohammed Abdulsalam, the chief Houthi negotiator, told Reuters.
“As long as they announced the cessation (of US strikes) and they are actually committed to that, our position was self-defence so we will stop.”
While tensions may have eased between the United States and the Houthis, a resilient force that withstood years of heavy bombing in Yemen’s civil war, the agreement does not rule out attacks on any other Israel-linked vessels or targets.
Iran welcomes the ‘end of the US aggression’ on Yemen, its Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said yesterday, thanking Oman for its efforts in this regard.
The US intensified strikes on the Houthis this year, to stop attacks on Red Sea shipping. Rights activists have raised concerns over civilian casualties.
“They said ‘please don’t bomb us any more and we’re not going to attack your ships’,” Trump said of the Houthis during an Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. “And I will accept their word, and we are going to stop the bombing of the Houthis effective immediately.”
The Houthis have been firing at Israel and at shipping in the Red Sea since Israel began its military offensive against Hamas in Gaza after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The US military has said it has struck more than 1,000 targets since its current operation in Yemen, known as Operation Rough Rider, started on March 15. The strikes, the US military said, have killed ‘hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders’.
Tensions have been high since the Gaza war began, but have risen further since a Houthi missile landed near Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, prompting Israeli air strikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah port on Monday. The Israeli military carried out an air strike on Yemen’s main airport in Sana’a on Tuesday, its second attack in two days on Houthi rebels after a surge in tensions between the group and Israel.
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