A Houthi official said Tuesday that Saudi warplanes struck Yemen, killing three people, including two children, while Human Rights Watch accused the Houthi rebels of possible war crimes with its attacks on commercial vessels.
The renewed fighting in Yemen is endangering civilians and threatening shipping through the Red Sea, a route that has become more important due to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. launched its war against Iran.
The Associated Press could not independently verify the Houthi official’s claim. The official did not say what the Saudi warplanes had targeted.
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Anees al Asbahi, a spokesperson for the Houthi-run Health Ministry, said in a post on X on Tuesday that Saudi airstrikes killed three people, including two children, in Yemen’s Taiz province. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify that claim.
Al-Asbahi said another two other people were injured in the strikes.
The escalation comes as the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have seized the strategic islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish in the southern Red Sea, bolstering their ability to control a key maritime shipping route.
Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas transits in peacetime — in the opening days of the war. The Saudis have since used the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which leads out of the Red Sea, for crude oil exports.
The Houthis’ latest seizures, which follow their capture of the Red Sea port of Mokha and a strategic island last week, puts more pressure on Saudi shipments and, in turn, global oil supplies and prices.
This could give Iran additional leverage in its war with the United States.
Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that at least three attacks by Houthi rebels against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden between Jul. 20 and Aug. 24 could amount to war crimes.
The Houthi attacks against Saudi-linked shipping started in mid-July in the latest flare-up of violence in the Yemen civil war.
Niku Jafarnia, a Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that irrespective of any politics involved, “attacks on civilian crews carried out deliberately or recklessly are war crimes.”
The Houthis say their attacks on Saudi-linked shipping are retaliation for the Saudi-led coalition blockade on the Houthi-held areas in Yemen, a measure related to Yemen’s decade-old civil war.
The human rights organization said the Houthis claimed to have attacked at least nine vessels over the span of a month, including two Saudi-flagged vessels, a Tanzania-flagged vessel, and a Dominica-flagged vessel.
The rights group urged the Houthis to “immediately and unconditionally end all unlawful attacks on civilian ships.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will visit the country on Wednesday and meet with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
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This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
