US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was ordering a halt to nearly two months of US air strikes on Yemen’s Houthis, saying 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 global trade route.
“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.
That likely means an abrupt end to a campaign of air strikes 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 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”.
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