Top Ansarullah official: US, British vessels 'legitimate targets’ for Yemeni forces

Hours after the United States and Britain launched a fresh series of military strikes in Yemen, a senior member of the Ansarullah resistance movement said that all US and British vessels have now become “legitimate targets.”

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of Ansarullah's political bureau, told Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network that Yemeni Armed Forces will continue to strike Israeli-owned ships and vessels heading towards ports in the occupied territories as long as the Israeli onslaught on Gaza continues.

He underscored that “all American and British vessels have become legitimate targets for the Yemeni Armed Forces in response to their direct and declared aggression against the Republic of Yemen.”

The high-ranking Ansarullah official went on to say that Yemeni forces are yearning for an outright confrontation with American troops, stating that further deployment of US and British soldiers to Yemen will expand the scope of targets that Yemenis can go for.

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“Presence of US and UK special forces on the Yemeni soil will provoke the entire walks of the society, and will bring them together in order to stand up to aggression,” Bukhaiti pointed out.

He called on Washington, London and the Tel Aviv regime to immediately stop the devastating military campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip if they want to spare their respective ships from Yemeni retaliatory attacks.

“A British warship was directly struck in the vicinity of a US ship,” Bukhaiti noted.

American and British forces conducted a new round of joint air strikes against targets in Yemen, after the United States military said it had destroyed an anti-ship missile in the country following a missile attack on a British oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported on Saturday evening that two airstrikes targeted the port of Ras Issa, Yemen's main oil export terminal, in the strategic western province of Hudaydah.

Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.

The United States and United Kingdom have been carrying out strikes against Yemen after the Biden administration and its allies offered the Tel Aviv regime unqualified support, and said that Yemeni forces bear the consequences of their attacks against Israeli-owned ships or merchant vessels heading to the occupied territories.

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Yemeni Armed Forces have said that they won’t stop their attacks until unrelenting Israeli ground and aerial offensives in Gaza, which have killed at least 26,083 people and wounded another 64,487 individuals, come to an end. 

Leader of the Ansarullah resistance movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has said in a speech that it is “a great honor and blessing to be confronting America directly.”

The attacks have forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.

Tankers are instead adding thousands of miles to international shipping routes by sailing around the continent of Africa rather than going through the Suez Canal.

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