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Yemenis on Sunday recounted their panic and terror as the first US attacks under President Donald Trump struck rebel-held areas, killing dozens and wounding more than 100.A “horrific explosion” rocked the capital, Sanaa, late on Saturday during suhoor, the night-time meal during the holy month of Ramadan, one resident said.”The house shook, the windows shattered, and my family and I were terrified,” father-of-two Ahmed, who did not want to give his full name, told AFP.”I’ve been living in Sanaa for 10 years, hearing shelling throughout the war. By God, I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”The Iran-backed Huthi rebels, who control much of the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, have been fighting a Saudi-led coalition since 2015.The US strikes were aimed at preventing a resurgence of months of attacks on the vital Red Sea shipping lane during the Israel-Hamas war.”This is the most scared I’ve been since the beginning of the war,” said Malik, 43, who has three children.”Yesterday’s shelling in Al-Jiraf (northern Sanaa) was absolutely terrifying: six strikes in a row.”My children were screaming and crying in my arms. It’s the first time I’ve ever said the Shahada,” he said, referring to the prayer that is recited before death.”I was waiting for one of these missiles to hit our house.”- Victims are ‘always civilians’ -Attacks on Sanaa and Saada, the birthplace of the Huthi movement in Yemen’s rugged northern mountains, and elsewhere killed 31 and wounded 101, according to the rebels’ health ministry.Footage from Huthi media showed children and a woman among those being treated in a hospital emergency room, including a dazed girl with blackened legs wrapped in bandages.Late on Saturday, a plume of white smoke had risen over Sanaa after explosions rocked the northern district of the capital.However, the Huthis sealed off areas around the blast sites, making it impossible to gauge the true scale of the destruction.Mohammad Albasha, a US-based consultant, said the area targeted in Sanaa was home to senior Huthi leaders and considered their stronghold in the capital.”This is the point of no return, and from now on, it’s gloves off between the Huthis and CENTCOM,” he said, referring to the regional US military command.Amal, 29, who lives with her mother in Sanaa, said Saturday’s attacks were “terrifying… windows were shattered and the walls of the house shook”. But she added: “We’ve witnessed hundreds of raids, most of them in the same areas.”Several military operations against the Huthis have been announced, but they’ve only added more casualties, most of them civilians.”The homes and locations of the leaders are well-known, but the victims are always civilians.”

The first US strikes against Yemen’s Huthis since Donald Trump took office killed 31 people, the rebels said Sunday, with the US president warning “hell will rain down upon” the Iran-backed group if it did not stop attacking shipping.The Huthis, who have attacked Israel and Red Sea shipping throughout the Gaza war, said children were among those killed.An AFP photographer in the rebel-held capital Sanaa heard explosions and saw plumes of smoke rising.Attacks on Sanaa, as well as on areas in Saada, Al-Bayda and Radaa, killed at least 31 people and wounded 101, “most of whom were children and women”, Huthi health ministry spokesperson Anis Al-Asbahi said.Footage on Huthi media showed children and a woman among those being treated in a hospital emergency room, including a dazed girl with blackened legs wrapped in bandages.Trump, in a post on social media, vowed to “use overwhelming lethal force” to end the Huthi attacks, which the rebels say are in solidarity with Palestinians amid the Gaza war.”To all Huthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!” he said.Trump also issued a stern warning to the group’s main backer.”To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY!” he said.”Do NOT threaten the American People, their President… or Worldwide shipping lanes. If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”The Huthis vowed the strikes “will not pass without response”, while Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi condemned the deaths and said Washington had “no authority” to dictate Tehran’s foreign policy.The Huthi Ansarullah website slammed what it called Washington’s “criminal brutality”.US Central Command, which posted videos of fighter jets taking off and a bomb demolishing a compound, said “precision strikes” were launched to “defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation”.- ‘Escalation with escalation’ -“Our Yemeni armed forces are fully prepared to confront escalation with escalation,” the Huthi political bureau said.The rebels, who have controlled much of Yemen for more than a decade, are part of the “axis of resistance” of pro-Iran groups staunchly opposed to Israel and the United States.They have launched scores of drone and missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Huthis had “attacked US warships 174 times and commercial vessels 145 times since 2023”.The campaign put a major strain on the vital route, which normally carries about 12 percent of world shipping traffic, forcing many companies to take a costly detour around southern Africa.The Palestinian group Hamas, which has praised the Huthi support, lashed out at the US strikes, branding them “a stark violation of international law and an assault on the country’s sovereignty and stability”.Iran “strongly condemned the brutal air strikes” in a statement, denouncing them as a “gross violation of the principles of the UN Charter”.The head of the country’s Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, said: “Iran will not wage war, but if anyone threatens, it will give appropriate, decisive and conclusive responses.”- ‘Political dialogue’ – The United States has launched several rounds of strikes on Huthi targets.After halting their attacks when a ceasefire took effect in Gaza in January, the Huthis announced on Tuesday that they would resume them until Israel lifted its blockade of aid to the devastated Palestinian territory.Trump’s statement did not reference the dispute over Israel, but focused on previous Huthi attacks on merchant shipping.Earlier this month, the Trump administration reclassified the Huthis as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, banning any US interaction with it.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Moscow is close to Tehran.”Continued Huthi attacks on US military and commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea will not be tolerated,” Rubio told Lavrov, according to the State Department.Russia’s foreign ministry said that “Lavrov stressed the need for an immediate cessation of the use of force and the importance for all sides to engage in political dialogue… (to) prevent further bloodshed”.The Huthis captured Sanaa in 2014 and were poised to overrun most of the rest of the country before a Saudi-led coalition intervened.The war devastated the already impoverished nation. Fighting has largely been on hold since a 2022 ceasefire, but the promised peace process has stalled in the face of Huthi attacks on Israel and Israel-linked shipping.burs-smw/dv

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A massive explosion believed to have been triggered by a scrap dealer handling an old bomb killed at least 16 people in Syria, civil defence officials said Sunday.The blast on Saturday in the Mediterranean city of Latakia demolished a four-storey building, ripping down slabs of concrete and crushing residents underneath chunks of their flattened homes.Rescue officials pulled out the bodies through the night — including five children — as they searched for survivors.Syria’s civil defence team said 16 people had been killed “as a result of an explosion in a hardware store” in the apartment block.”Search and rescue operations continue to recover those trapped,” it added, in a post on Telegram, reporting that at least 18 people had been injured.Images from Syria’s SANA news agency showed a plume of smoke rising from Latakia’s crowded southern neighbourhood of Al-Rimal, and a pile of rubble where the building had once stood.The news agency reported that a scrap dealer had handled an unexploded munition in an attempt to recover the metal.Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also called the explosion an “accident”.- ‘Completely destroyed’ -Ward Jammoul, 32, from Latakia, told AFP she heard a “loud blast”, adding that the building had been “completely destroyed”.She said rescue workers and crowds of other people had gathered to “look for those trapped under the rubble”.Aid agency Humanity and Inclusion warned last month of the dangers posed by unexploded munitions left over from Syria’s civil war that erupted in 2011.It said experts estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 of the roughly one million munitions used during the war never detonated.The explosion on Saturday came on the same day as Syrians gathered to commemorate the 14th anniversary of their uprising for the first time since president Bashar al-Assad was toppled.The Syrian conflict began with peaceful demonstrations against Assad’s government on March 15, 2011, in which thousands took part.It later spiralled into civil war after he crushed the protests.This year’s commemoration comes after Assad was toppled on December 8 by Islamist-led rebels.Ahmed al-Sharaa, who headed the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which spearheaded the offensive, has since been named interim president.