Middle East crisis live: US and UK hit dozens of Houthi targets across Yemen in new wave of strikes | Israel

Yemen’s Houthis said US and British airstrikes “will not deter us” and vowed a response after dozens of targets were hit in retaliation for the Iran-backed rebels’ repeated Red Sea attacks, AFP reports.

The joint air raids in Yemen late Saturday followed a separate wave of unilateral American strikes against Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria in response to a drone attack that killed three US soldiers in Jordan.

Saturday’s strikes hit “36 Houthi targets across 13 locations in Yemen in response to the Houthis’ continued attacks against international and commercial shipping as well as naval vessels transiting the Red Sea,” the United States, Britain and other countries that provided support for the operation said in a statement.

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes “are intended to further disrupt and degrade the capabilities of the Iranian-backed Houthi militia to conduct their reckless and destabilising attacks.”

Neither Austin nor the joint statement identified the specific places that were hit, but Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the capital Sana’a and other rebel-held areas were targeted.

Saree reported a total of 48 airstrikes, and said on X that “these attacks will not deter us from our … stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” where Israel’s war in Gaza has raged since early October.

The latest strikes “will not pass without response and punishment,” Saree said.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said early Sunday that at least 92 people had been killed overnight, as the group considers a proposal that would halt its war with Israel in the besieged Palestinian territory, AFP reports.

Hamas’ media office said the strikes included an Israeli bombardment of a kindergarten in Rafah where displaced people were sheltering.

International mediators are making a full-court press to seal a proposed truce deal thrashed out last week in Paris.

But a top Hamas official in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, said on Saturday that the proposed framework was missing some details.

Hamas needed more time to “announce our position”, Hamdan said, “based on … our desire to put an end as quickly as possible to the aggression that our people suffer”.

The United States and Britain struck at least 30 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday in another wave of assaults meant to further disable Iran-backed groups that have attacked US and international interests in response to the Israel-Hamas war.

Ships and fighter jets on Saturday launched strikes against the Houthis. It followed an air assault in Iraq and Syria on Friday targeting other Iran-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for the drone strike that killed three US troops – William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Ladon Sanders and Breonna Alexsondria Moffett – in Jordan last weekend.

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said the military action “sends a clear message to the Houthis that they will continue to bear further consequences if they do not end their illegal attacks on international shipping and naval vessels.”

For more on this story:

Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of the Middle East crisis, I’m Yang Tian bringing you the latest news.

The US and Britain launched strikes against 36 Houthi targets across 13 locations in Yemen on Saturday, in the second day of major operations against Iran-linked groups after a deadly attack on American troops.

The latest strikes marked the third time the US and Britain had conducted a large, joint operation to strike Houthi launchers, radar sites and drones.

More details soon, in other developments:

• The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, issued a statement on the new strikes in Yemen. He said the military action “sends a clear message to the Houthis that they will continue to bear further consequences if they do not end their illegal attacks on international shipping and naval vessels”.

• The UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, also issued a statement, saying the strikes were “proportionate and targeted”. He stressed they were not an escalation, adding: “I am confident that our latest strikes have further degraded the Houthis’ capabilities.”

• Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4s, supported by Voyager tankers, carried out the strikes against Houthi locations in Yemen. The Typhoons used Paveway IV precision-guided bombs against several military targets. An MoD statement said a ground control station at as-Salif, west of Sana’a, which was used to control Houthi drones, was hit. It adds that the aircraft also attacked targets at Bani.

• A spokesperson for the Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, warned that the US reprisal strikes in Syria and Iraq will have disastrous consequences for the region. Iraq’s Anbar Operations Command reported 16 fatalities and 25 injuries, but no official death toll has been issued. A senior US administration official has said Iraq was given short-notice warning that the US would strike. The Baghdad government dismissed the assertions as “lies”.

• The UN security council will hold an emergency meeting on Monday afternoon on the US strikes in Iraq and Syria, according to reports. The meeting, requested by UN permanent member Russia, will take place at 4pm Eastern time (2100 GMT) on Monday, it has been reported.

• The Syrian military said on Saturday that the US occupation of Syrian territory “cannot continue” after Washington carried out the deadly strikes. Syria’s defence ministry said the “blatant air aggression” of US forces led to a number of civilians and soldiers being killed, others being wounded and some significant damage to public and private property.

• Israeli forces struck densely populated areas across the middle and southern Gaza Strip in a midnight attack on Friday and early Saturday, killing at least 25 people, the Palestinian health ministry said. Israeli fighter jets struck Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, as well as the city of Rafah in the south. The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said at least 107 people had been killed and 165 injured overnight. At least 27,238 Palestinians have been killed and 66,452 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures by the Gaza health ministry.

• A senior Hamas official has confirmed it has received a framework for a ceasefire proposal in the Israel-Gaza war, but said a final agreement has not yet been reached. “We will announce our position” soon, Osama Hamdan said at a news conference in Beirut on Saturday. Qatari officials, who are mediating the talks along with Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel, expressed newfound optimism throughout this week that an agreement was in sight.