Trump says US to stop bombing Houthis after rebels pledge to stop ship attacks
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he is ordering a halt to nearly two months of American air strikes on Yemen’s Houthis, saying that the Iran-backed rebels have indicated that “they don’t want to fight any more” and have pledged to stop attacking ships along a vital maritime corridor.
“We’re going to stop the bombing of the Houthis, effective immediately,” Trump said at the start of his Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Trump said that the Houthis had indicated to US officials that “they don’t want to fight any more. They just don’t want to fight. And we will honour that, and we will stop the bombings.”
That is likely to mean an abrupt end to a bombing campaign that began in March, when Trump promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” after the Houthis said they would resume attacks on Israeli vessels sailing off Yemen in response to Israel’s mounting another blockade on the Gaza Strip.
At the time, they described the warning as affecting the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Arabian Sea.
Trump said the Houthis had “capitulated but, more importantly, we will take their word that they say they will not be blowing up ships any more. And that’s what the purpose of what we were doing,” Trump said.