Citing two US officials, the New York Times reported on Saturday that Ansarullah has retained about three-quarters of its ability to fire missiles and drones at ships transiting the Red Sea.
A top US military officer, Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, the director of the military’s Joint Staff, said Friday that the strikes had achieved their objective of damaging the Ansarullah fighters’ ability to launch the kind of complex drone and missile attack they had conducted on Tuesday.
But the two US officials cautioned Saturday that even after hitting more than 60 missile and drone targets with more than 150 precision-guided munitions, the strikes had damaged or destroyed only about 20% to 30% of the Ansarullah’s offensive capability, much of which is mounted on mobile platforms and can be readily moved or hidden.
Finding Ansarullah targets is proving to be more challenging than anticipated. The US and other Western intelligence agencies have not spent significant time or resources in recent years collecting data on the location of Ansarullah air defenses, command hubs, munitions depots and storage and production facilities for drones and missiles.
In their first assault in the early hours of Friday local time, the US and Britain, backed by Bahrain, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands, struck more than 60 targets at almost 30 locations in Yemen, killing five people and injuring six others.
The Ansarullah fighters have been attacking commercial ships transiting the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, and have said they will continue until Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip.
Israel waged the brutal war on besieged Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance carried out an unprecedented operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 23,843 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 60,317 others.
