When the U.S. and Israel Bomb the Houthis, Civilians Pay the Highest Price

New York Times

21-05-2025

Mohammed Omar Baghwi was working the evening shift on April 17 at Ras Isa port in Yemen's northwestern Hudaydah Province when the American military began bombing.
As a manager, Mr. Baghwi, 45, was responsible for a department that filled cooking gas cylinders. He was one of at least 74 people killed during the strike, making it one of the deadliest attacks by the United States on Yemen.
U.S. Central Command said it had attacked the port to 'degrade the economic source of power' of the Iran-backed Houthi militant group based in northern Yemen that controls most of the country. But Mr. Baghwi's family said he had been just a civilian trying to make ends meet.
'Mohammed and his companions had done nothing wrong,' said Hassan Omar Baghwi, his brother. 'They were simply doing their job to earn a living for themselves and their families under extremely difficult living conditions.'
The Houthis have been firing drone and missile strikes at Israel in solidarity with Hamas after it led an attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and to pressure Israel over its campaign in Gaza. The Houthis have also targeted commercial ships in the Red Sea, a vital trade route.
Those attacks have prompted retaliatory strikes from the United States and Israel, which, for the past two months, have regularly bombed Yemen. The American and Israeli governments say the strikes were focused on Houthi leaders and assets, but they have also killed many civilians, destroyed vital infrastructure and deepened uncertainty in the poorest country in the Middle East.
Before President Trump announced this month that the United States had reached a cease-fire with the militia, the Trump administration had said its main goal was to restore navigation in the Red Sea. When he announced the cease-fire, Mr. Trump said the Houthis had 'capitulated.'
The Houthis have continued to attack Israel, however, launching missiles that have landed near Ben Gurion Airport, close to Tel Aviv, setting off sirens and sending millions of civilians into bomb shelters. Israel has responded with more strikes, and the two sides show little sign of stopping their tit-for-tat attacks.
Analysts say the strikes will only add to the misery for Yemeni civilians, the vast majority of whom live in Houthi-controlled territory and had already experienced decades of war before the U.S. and Israeli attacks. The Houthis oppose the United States and Israel, and see themselves as part of the Iranian-led 'axis of resistance,' alongside Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But despite the months of strikes, some analysts and officials have questioned whether the U.S. and Israeli efforts have degraded the Houthis' military capability. The Trump administration has launched more than 1,000 strikes costing billions of dollars and have destroyed Houthi weapons and equipment. But U.S. intelligence agencies have said the group could easily reconstitute.
'The strikes have already triggered a fuel crisis, which will drive up the cost of basic goods and services in a country where most of the population are struggling to afford food,' said Nadwa al-Dawsari, an analyst focused on Yemen at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
'Even if their operations slow temporarily, they'll regroup, rebuild and return stronger,' she added.
Civilians and aid workers say the bombing campaigns have compounded an already dire humanitarian situation.
In 2014, the Houthis seized on a period of political instability to take over the country's capital, Sana. A Saudi-led military coalition backed by U.S. assistance and weapons began a bombing campaign in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government. The coalition enforced a de facto naval and air blockade that restricted the flow of food and other goods into Houthi-held territory. The intervention failed, leaving the Houthis in power in the north of the country. The subsequent civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni civilians and caused one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
In a briefing to the United Nations Security Council last week, humanitarian officials warned that Yemen still faced serious challenges. 'Half of Yemen's children — or 2.3 million — are malnourished, 600,000 of them severely so,' said Tom Fletcher, the United Nations' humanitarian chief. He added that 2,000 nutrition programs had been forced to shut down.
Israeli airstrikes on Yemeni cities this month, including on the city's international airport, caused nearly $500 million in damages, according to the airport's director, and flights were suspended for more than a week. Israel said the attack had been in retaliation for a Houthi missile strike near Ben Gurion Airport.
But the airport in Sana is mainly used for civilian travel and is one of the few ways Yemenis can get access to emergency medical treatment overseas.
Waseem al-Haidari, a 42-year-old government employee in Sana, said past closures of the airport because of airstrikes had caused painful financial and emotional hardship on families like his when emergency medical treatment is needed.
'Our family sold valuable belongings and borrowed additional money to cover my brother's trip through Aden Airport to Cairo for a cornea transplant,' he said. Critically ill patients in Yemen are left with no choice but to endure a grueling 24-hour road journey to Aden or Seiyun, in the south of Yemen, to seek medical evacuation abroad.
The western port city of Hudaydah, which the Israeli military says is a critical supply route for the Houthis, has borne the brunt of U.S. and Israeli strikes over the past year. Many of its ports and roads, which are lifelines for food and medicine entering the country, are in ruins.
Even residents in southern areas of the country that are run by the internationally recognized Yemeni government say they were being affected, even if they are not in an area that has been regularly bombed.
Saleh Ramadan, 49, lives in a dilapidated home in the southern city of al-Mukalla, where his children sleep in a dimly lit room. There is no furniture, no table for meals, no cupboards to store clothes.
'In the past, we could buy meat and chicken, even celebrate Eid with meat and new clothes,' he said, referring the Islamic festival celebrated at the end of Ramadan. Now, he said, his family often skips meals.
Mr. Ramadan's eldest son, Mohammed, 20, dropped out of school to help his father deliver cooking gas. When the children get sick, the family relies mostly on herbal remedies because it cannot get medicine, which has become too expensive or is in short supply.
Mr. Trump's decision to slash overall U.S. aid spending has made matters worse. Aid agencies have had to scale back food distribution, and the United Nations' World Food Program has warned that without new funding, programs for malnourished children under 5 could stop as early as this month.
The Trump administration's decision to re-designate the Houthis as a terrorist group has also complicated efforts to deliver humanitarian aid, as international banks fear contravening U.S. sanctions and are hesitant about processing transactions involving Yemen. Donor fatigue and geopolitical tensions have made securing aid even more challenging.
The costs of food and transportation have soared, and the U.N.'s humanitarian office has reported that many families now spend up to 60 percent of their income on food alone.
For Sara Mohammed, a widowed mother of three living in al-Mukalla, the struggle has been relentless. Living in a makeshift home with her mentally ill mother and blind father, she said the family relied on her sister's income as a domestic worker and their father's modest pension.
'We can't afford food,' she said. 'My sister dropped out of college to work two shifts. She has heart problems but can't afford medical treatment. My kids eat boiled rice. We survive on faith.'