Key Points
- Australia supported the US in striking Houthi targets in Yemen.
- The Iran-backed group has been targeting ships in the Red Sea since late last year.
- Australia's involvement has not been taken lightly, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said.
Australia supported United States-led strikes against targets linked to the Houthi movement in Yemen by providing personnel, Defence Minister Richard Marles told reporters on Friday.
They are the first strikes against the Iran-backed group since it started targeting international shipping in the Red Sea late last year.
Marles spoke to reporters in Geelong, Victoria, saying Australia's involvement was not a decision "taken lightly".
"Australia's support of these actions came in the form of personnel in the operational headquarters," he said, adding that the action taken was about "maintaining freedom of navigation on the high seas".
"The Houthis have been engaging in disruption of maritime activity ... Australia will continue to support any actions which assert the global rules-based order, which assert the UN Convention and law of the sea and which assert freedom of navigation on the high seas," Marles said.
Houthi troops have been attacking ships in the Red Sea. Source: AAP, EPA / Yahya Arhab
Earlier on Friday, the White House announced the strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in a statement.
"Today, at my direction, US military forces - together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands - successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways," US President Joe Biden said in the statement.
"These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea - including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history."
A Houthi official on Thursday confirmed raids across the country, including in the capital Sanaa along with the cities of Saada and Dhamar as well as in Hodeidah governate, calling them "American-Zionist-British aggression."
The Houthis say the US and UK will soon realise today's strikes were - quote - "the greatest folly in their history".
Saudi Arabia, which had been hopeful of reaching a peace deal with the Houthis after almost a decade of conflict, said it was following the developments with 'great concern' and called for restraint.
Houthis will fight back
Middle East Analyst Amin Saikal told SBS News the Houthis will "definitely retaliate."
"Yemen is one of the poorest countries and the least developed countries in the region. So, perhaps the position of the Houthis should not be over-exaggerated.
"But serious risk of escalation is there, simply because there are too many actors involved in the region, and they are all hostile to one another."
The ongoing strikes are one of the most dramatic demonstrations to date of the widening of Hamas-Israel war in the Middle East since its eruption in October.
One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the strikes were being carried out by aircraft, ships and submarine, the Reuters news agency reported.
The official said more than a dozen locations were targeted and the strikes were intended to be more than just symbolic.
The Houthis, who control most of Yemen, defied a United Nations call to halt their missile and drone attacks on Red Sea shipping routes and warnings from the US of consequences if they failed to do so.
The Houthis say their attacks are a demonstration of support for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls Gaza.
Israel has launched a military assault that has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza after Hamas' attack on Israel on 7 October which killed 1,200 Israelis.
The Houthi have attacked 27 ships to date, disrupting international commerce on the key route between Europe and Asia that accounts for about 15 per cent of the world's shipping traffic.
