US vows to keep hitting Houthis until shipping attacks stop

A ship fires missiles at an undisclosed location, after US President Donald Trump launched military strikes against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis on Saturday over the group's attacks against Red Sea shipping. (Reuters via US Central Command)
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A ship fires missiles at an undisclosed location, after US President Donald Trump launched military strikes against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis on Saturday over the group's attacks against Red Sea shipping. (Reuters via US Central Command)
Smoke rises from a location reportedly struck by US airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Saturday, March 15, 2025. (AP)
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Smoke rises from a location reportedly struck by US airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Saturday, March 15, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 17 March 2025
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US vows to keep hitting Houthis until shipping attacks stop

US vows to keep hitting Houthis until shipping attacks stop
  • Houthis spokesperson said, without offering evidence, that the group had targeted US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its warships in the Red Sea
  • US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, dismissed the claims
  • Houthi-run health ministry said the death toll of the US attacks has risen to 53 while the number of injuries rose to 98

WASHINGTON/ADEN: The United States will keep attacking Yemen’s Houthis until they end attacks on shipping, the US defense secretary said on Sunday, as the Iran-aligned group signaled it could escalate in response to deadly US strikes the day before.
The airstrikes are the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since President Donald Trump took office in January. One US official told Reuters the campaign might continue for weeks.

A spokesperson for the Houthi-run health ministry said the death toll of the US attacks has risen to 53. Five children and two women were among the victims while the number of injuries rose to 98, Anees Alsbahi, the spokesperson, added on X.

Houthi leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said on Sunday that his militants would target US ships in the Red Sea as long as the US continues its attacks on Yemen. “If they continue their aggression, we will continue the escalation,” he said in a televised speech.
The Houthi movement’s political bureau described the attacks as a “war crime,” while Moscow urged Washington to cease the strikes.
The Houthis’ military spokesperson on Sunday said, without offering evidence, that the group had targeted US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its warships in the Red Sea with ballistic missiles and drones in response to the US attacks.
A US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to Reuters, dismissed the claims, saying they were not aware of any Houthi attack on the Truman.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures“: “The minute the Houthis say we’ll stop shooting at your ships, we’ll stop shooting at your drones. This campaign will end, but until then it will be unrelenting.”
“This is about stopping the shooting at assets ... in that critical waterway, to reopen freedom of navigation, which is a core national interest of the United States, and Iran has been enabling the Houthis for far too long,” he said. “They better back off.”

The Houthis, who have taken control of most of Yemen over the past decade, said last week they would resume attacks on Israeli ships passing through the Red Sea if Israel did not lift a block on aid entering Gaza.
They had launched scores of attacks on shipping after Israel’s war with Hamas began in late 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinians.
Trump also told Iran, the Houthis’ main backer, to stop supporting the group immediately. He said if Iran threatened the United States, “America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!“

Iran warns US not to escalate
In response, Hossein Salami, the top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said the Houthis made their own decisions.
“We warn our enemies that Iran will respond decisively and destructively if they carry out their threats,” he told state media.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday called for “utmost restraint and a cessation of all military activities” in Yemen and warned new escalation could “fuel cycles of retaliation that may further destabilize Yemen and the region, and pose grave risks to the already dire humanitarian situation in the country,” his spokesperson said in a statement.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” program: “There’s no way the ... Houthis would have the ability to do this kind of thing unless they had support from Iran. And so this was a message to Iran: don’t keep supporting them, because then you will also be responsible for what they are doing in attacking Navy ships and attacking global shipping.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Rubio to urge an “immediate cessation of the use of force and the importance for all sides to engage in political dialogue,” Moscow said.
Most of the 31 people confirmed killed in the US strikes were women and children, said Anees Al-Asbahi, spokesperson for the Houthi-run health ministry. More than 100 were injured.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claims of civilian casualties. Reuters could not independently verify the claims.
Residents in Sanaa said the strikes hit a neighborhood known to host several members of the Houthi leadership.
“The explosions were violent and shook the neighborhood like an earthquake. They terrified our women and children,” said one of the residents, who gave his name as Abdullah Yahia.
In Sanaa, a crane and bulldozer were used to remove debris at one site and people used their bare hands to pick through the rubble. At a hospital, medics treated the injured, including children, and the bodies of several casualties were placed in a yard, wrapped in plastic sheets, Reuters footage showed.
Strikes also targeted Houthi military sites in the city of Taiz, two witnesses said on Sunday.

Houthis’ Red Sea attacks disrupt global trade route 
Another strike, on a power station in the town of Dahyan, led to a power cut, Al-Masirah TV reported early on Sunday. Dahyan is where Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, the enigmatic leader of the Houthis, often meets visitors.
The Houthi attacks on shipping have disrupted global commerce and set the US military off on a costly campaign to intercept missiles and drones.
The group suspended its campaign when Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza in January.
But on March 12, the Houthis said their threat to attack Israeli ships would remain in effect until Israel reapproved the delivery of aid and food into Gaza.


Doctor at Brown University deported to Lebanon despite US judge’s order

Dr. Rasha Alawieh. (Supplied)
Dr. Rasha Alawieh. (Supplied)
Updated 49 min 33 sec ago
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Doctor at Brown University deported to Lebanon despite US judge’s order

Dr. Rasha Alawieh. (Supplied)
  • Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen, has an H-1B visa authorizing her to work at Brown University, yet she was detained on Thursday after returning from travel to Lebanon
  • Her expulsion is set to be the focus of a hearing on Monday before a federal judge in Boston, who demanded information on whether his order had been “willfully” disobeyed

BOSTON: A Rhode Island doctor who is an assistant professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported to Lebanon even though a judge had issued an order blocking the US visa holder’s immediate removal from the country, according to court papers.
The expulsion of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is set to be the focus of a hearing on Monday before a federal judge in Boston, who on Sunday demanded information on whether US Customs and Border Protection had “willfully” disobeyed his order.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said he had received a “detailed and specific” timeline of the events from an attorney working on Alawieh’s behalf that raised “serious allegations” about whether his order was violated.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Rasha Alawieh was removed after arriving at Boston airport

• Judge questions if Customs and Border Protection disobeyed his order

• Court hearing set for Monday

The agency has not said why she was removed. But her expulsion came as Republican US President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to sharply restrict border crossing and ramp up immigration arrests.
A CBP spokesperson, Hilton Beckham, in a statement said migrants bear the burden of establishing admissibility and that the agency’s officers “adhere to strict protocols to identify and stop threats.”
Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen who lives in Providence, was detained on Thursday after arriving at Logan International Airport in Boston after traveling to Lebanon to see relatives, according to a lawsuit filed by her cousin, Yara Chehab.
She had held a visa to be in the United States since 2018, when she first came to complete a two-year fellowship at Ohio State University before then completing a fellowship at the University of Washington and then moving to the Yale-Waterbury Internal Medicine Program, which she completed in June.
While in Lebanon, the US consulate issued Alawieh an H-1B visa authorizing her entry into the United States to work at Brown University, the lawsuit said. Such visas are reserved for people from other countries who are employed in specialty occupations.
Despite that visa, CBP detained her at the airport for reasons her family members have still not been provided, according to the lawsuit, which argued her rights were being violated.
In response to the lawsuit, Sorokin on Friday evening issued orders barring Alawieh’s removal from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice to the court and requiring her to be brought to a court hearing on Monday.
Yet according to the cousin’s attorneys, after that order was issued, Alawieh was flown to Paris, where she was then set to board a flight for Lebanon that had been scheduled for Sunday.
Sorokin on Sunday directed the government to provide a legal and factual response by Monday morning ahead of the previously scheduled hearing and to preserve all emails, text messages and other documents concerning Alawieh’s arrival and removal.
Concerns have also been raised in other cases about whether the Trump administration is complying with court rulings blocking parts of its agenda.
The Trump administration on Sunday said it has deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador under seldom-used wartime powers, despite a federal judge’s order temporarily barring such deportations.

 

 


Sudanese police accuse RSF paramilitaries after 11 bodies found at bottom of a well in Khartoum

Sudanese police accuse RSF paramilitaries after 11 bodies found at bottom of a well in Khartoum
Updated 17 March 2025
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Sudanese police accuse RSF paramilitaries after 11 bodies found at bottom of a well in Khartoum

Sudanese police accuse RSF paramilitaries after 11 bodies found at bottom of a well in Khartoum
  • The bodies of 11 people were recovered Saturday from the deep well in the Fayhaa neighborhood of the city
  • Police say the victims were killed by paramilitary by the paramilitary RSF when itwas controlling the area

CAIRO: Sudanese authorities said Sunday many bodies have been found at the bottom of a well in the capital, Khartoum, a few days after the military cleared the area from a notorious paramilitary group.
The bodies of 11 people, including women and children, were recovered Saturday from the deep well in the Fayhaa neighborhood of the city, according to police.
Col. Abdul-Rahanan Mohamed Hassan, head of the civil defense’s field team in Khartoum, said a search of the the area was mounted after residents reported that they found a dead body in the well.
“We found inside this well different characters (bodies), males and females, adults and children,” Hassan said, adding that authorities were still searching the well.

Police say the victims were killed by the Rapid Support Forces before being thrown into the well when the paramilitary force was controlling the area. The military retook the area earlier this month as part of its sweeping advances in Khartoum and its sister city of Omdurman.
There was no immediate comment from the RSF.
Afraa Al-Hajj Omar, a resident of the nearby Hajj Youssef neighborhood, said that the RSF killed many people in the area and their bodies were left for days in the streets. She said many bodies were thrown in the well. “They robbed us, beat us, and tortured us,” she said.
Sudan was plunged into chaos in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the military and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into open warfare across the country.
At least 20,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher. The war has driven more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.
The fighting, which wrecked Khartoum and other urban areas has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.
The war has intensified in recent months, with the military making steady advances against the RSF in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.


Syria’s new rulers seek aid boost at EU conference

Syria’s new rulers seek aid boost at EU conference
Updated 17 March 2025
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Syria’s new rulers seek aid boost at EU conference

Syria’s new rulers seek aid boost at EU conference
  • Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani is expected to take part in the event, along with dozens of European and Arab ministers and representatives of international organizations

BRUSSELS: The interim government in Damascus will take part on Monday in an annual international conference to gather aid pledges for Syria, facing dire humanitarian problems and an uncertain political transition after the fall of Bashar Assad.
The conference has been hosted by the European Union in Brussels since 2017 — but took place without the government of Assad, who was shunned for his brutal actions in a civil war that began in 2011.
After Assad’s overthrow in December, EU officials hope to use the conference as a fresh start, despite concerns about deadly violence this month that pitted the new, Islamist rulers against Assad loyalists.
“This is a time of dire needs and challenges for Syria, as tragically evidenced by the recent wave of violence in coastal areas,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
But she said it was also “a time of hope,” citing an agreement struck on March 10 to integrate the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which control much of Syria’s northeast, into new state institutions.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the group that toppled Assad, is designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations. But EU officials want to engage with the new rulers as long as they stick to pledges to make the transition inclusive and peaceful.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani is expected to take part in the event, along with dozens of European and Arab ministers and representatives of international organizations.
EU officials say the conference is particularly important as the United States under President Donald Trump is making huge cutbacks to humanitarian and development aid programs.
Last year’s conference yielded pledges of 7.5 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in grants and loans, with the EU pledging 2.12 billion for 2024 and 2025.
About 16.5 million people in Syria require humanitarian assistance, with 12.9 million people needing food aid, according to the EU.
The destruction from the war has been compounded by an economic crisis that has sent the Syrian pound tumbling and pushed almost the entire population below the poverty line. ($1 = 0.9192 euros)

 


Families of Syrians who disappeared during its civil war say the search must go on

Families of Syrians who disappeared during its civil war say the search must go on
Updated 17 March 2025
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Families of Syrians who disappeared during its civil war say the search must go on

Families of Syrians who disappeared during its civil war say the search must go on
  • A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the interim government led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared

DARAA, Syria: Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the country’s 14-year civil war gathered in the city of Daraa on Sunday to urge the newly installed interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.
The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared during the war, many of them detained by former President Bashar Assad’s network of intelligence agencies as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist Daesh group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing.
When rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham overthrew Assad in December, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government’s dungeons. Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

On Sunday, the 14th anniversary of the countrywide uprisings that spiraled into civil war, Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government’s security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn’t heard from him since.
Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad’s ouster, trying to figure out her father’s whereabouts.
“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she said. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”
A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the interim government led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared. The commission also urged the new government to pursue perpetrators.
Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with Al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.
Syria’s civil war began after Assad crushed largely peaceful protests in 2011, one of the popular uprisings against Arab rulers known as the Arab Spring. Half a million people were killed during the conflict, and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.
 

 


Houthi leader calls for ‘million-strong’ rally after deadly US strikes

Houthi leader calls for ‘million-strong’ rally after deadly US strikes
Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Houthis, during a televised speech on the group's Al-Masirah TV channel (Screengrab
Updated 17 min 30 sec ago
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Houthi leader calls for ‘million-strong’ rally after deadly US strikes

Houthi leader calls for ‘million-strong’ rally after deadly US strikes
  • Abdulmalik Al-Houthi defiant in the face of US threat to continue strikes until the Houthis end their attacks on shipping
  • Houthis say Hodeidah was targeted in latest US strikes, claim second attack on US ships in 24 hours
  • claim second attack on US ships in 24 hours

SANAA: The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Sunday called for a “million-strong” march of defiance after deadly US strikes hit the capital, Sanaa, and other areas.
“I call on our dear people to go out tomorrow on the anniversary of the Battle of Badr in a million-strong march in Sanaa and the rest of the governorates,” Abdulmalik Al-Houthi said in a televised address, referring to a celebrated military victory by the Prophet Muhammad.

In the speech aired Sunday night, Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi, warned: “We will confront escalation with escalation.”

“We will respond to the American enemy in its raids, in its attacks, with missile strikes, by targeting its aircraft carrier, its warships, its ships,the secretive Houthi leader said. “However, we also still have escalation options. If it continues its aggression, we will move to additional escalation options.”
He did not elaborate.

Hours after Al-Houthi's speech, the Yemeni militia claimed responsibility on Monday for a second attack on an American aircraft carrier group in 24 hours, calling it retaliation for US strikes.

A spokesperson for the group said “for the second time in 24 hours” Houthi fighters launched missiles and drones at the USS Harry S. Truman and several of its warships in the northern Red Sea.

The announcement came a few hours after the Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV early on Monday reported that the US launched two strikes targeting Hodeidah, a port city in western Yemen controlled by the Houthis.

Hodeidah has served as a launching pad for Houthi attacks on commercial vessels passing through Bab Al-Mandab Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

The US military has yet to make any statement regarding the reported strikes on Hodeidah.

On Sunday, the Houthi-run Health Ministry said the overnight US strikes killed at least 53 people, including five women and two children, and wounded almost 100 in the capital of Sanaa and other provinces, including Saada, the rebels’ stronghold on the border with Saudi Arabia.

The overnight airstrikes were one of the most extensive attacks against the Houthis since the war in Gaza began in October 2023.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to use “overwhelming lethal force” until the Houthis cease their attacks, and warned that Tehran would be held “fully accountable” for their actions.

“We’re not going to have these people controlling which ships can go through and which ones cannot. And so your question is, how long will this go on? It will go on until they no longer have the capability to do that,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told CBS on Sunday. He said these are not the one-off retaliation strikes the Biden administration carried out after Houthi attacks.

The Houthis have repeatedly targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, sinking two vessels, in what they call acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel has been at war with Hamas, another Iranian ally.

Rubio said that over the past 18 months the Houthis had attacked the US Navy “directly” 174 times and targeted commercial shipping 145 times using “guided precision anti-ship weaponry.”

The attacks sparked the most serious combat the US Navy had seen since World War II.

Call for restraint

Amid the bellicose statements from both sides, the spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement called for “utmost restraint and a cessation of all military activities,” while warning of the “grave risks” to the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation.

On Sunday, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami, denied his country was involved in the Houthis’ attacks, saying it “plays no role in setting the national or operational policies” of the militant groups it is allied with across the region, according to state-run TV.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, writing on X, urged the US to halt its airstrikes and said Washington cannot dictate Iran’s foreign policy.
The US and others have long accused Iran of providing military aid to the rebels. The US Navy has seized Iranian-made missile parts and other weaponry it said was bound for the Houthis.
The United States, Israel and Britain previously hit Houthi-held areas in Yemen, but the new operation was conducted solely by the US It was the first strike on the Houthis under the second Trump administration.
The USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group, which includes the carrier, three Navy destroyers and one cruiser, is in the Red Sea and was part of the mission. The USS Georgia cruise missile submarine has also been operating in the region.

(With AFP and AP)