A deadly blast on Sunday near a UNESCO world heritage site in Yemen’s capital was caused by a Houthi missile, not a U.S. airstrike, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command said on Thursday.
The health ministry of the Houthi-led government said earlier this week that an American airstrike had hit a densely populated neighborhood of Sana, the Yemeni capital, killing 12 people and injuring 30 others. The blast struck an area adjacent to Sana’s Old City, a UNESCO world heritage site filled with ancient towers.
Dave Eastburn, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said in a statement that while the damage and casualties described by local health officials most “likely did occur,” they were not the result of an American attack. While the United States had conducted military operations over Sana that night, the closest American strike was more than three miles away, he added.
The Pentagon’s assessment that the damage was caused by a “Houthi Air Defense missile” was based in part on a review of “local reporting, including videos documenting Arabic writing on the missile’s fragments at the market,” Mr. Eastburn said. The Pentagon did not provide those videos or evidence of its claims in its statements.
An initial review by The New York Times of local reporting and open-source material in Yemen found a video showing a missile fragment with Arabic writing posted to social media, however it was from a different location from the market in Sana’s Old City.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis’ Politburo, said in a phone interview that the American denial was an attempt to smear the Houthis. He reiterated that the group believed that the United States targeted the neighborhood on Sunday, “just as it previously targeted ports, cemeteries and citizens’ homes, resulting in the deaths of hundreds.”
The Trump administration has in recent weeks carried out an intense bombing campaign over areas of Yemen controlled by the Houthis, an Iran-backed militia that rules much of the country’s north with an iron fist. The militia has been firing rockets and drones at Israel and attacking ships in the nearby Red Sea, in a campaign that its leaders say is in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Asked by The Times earlier this week about the Sunday strike, the U.S. Defense Department did not comment on the Houthis’ claims. Instead, it said in a statement that the United States was targeting “Iran-backed Houthi locations every day and night in Yemen” with the intention of restoring freedom of navigation and deterring the Houthis from further attacks.
The details of strikes have been challenging to verify for journalists on the ground. Houthi officials have stymied journalists and citizens from documenting airstrikes — including the site of the blast on Sunday — warning that such information could be exploited by foreign enemies. Asked about those restrictions, Mr. al-Bukhaiti said that “it is common for the targeted area to be cordoned off to facilitate rescue operations and to prevent civilians from gathering, in case of renewed strikes or the targeting of medics.”
For nearly a decade, Yemen has been at war. After the Houthis, a once-scrappy tribal militia, took over the Yemeni capital, the country was pummeled by a Saudi-led military coalition supplied with American bombs in an effort to defeat them.
That coalition expected swift victory. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people died from fighting, hunger and disease. And since the coalition pulled back several years ago, partly because of international pressure, the Houthis have deepened their grip on power, evolving into a de facto government in northern Yemen.
The Houthis began their latest attacks in late 2023, after Hamas stormed into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking hundreds more captive into Gaza. Israel responded by bombarding the territory, killing more than 50,000 people, according to the Gazan health authorities, whose figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The Houthis have described their attacks on ships as an attempt to pressure Israel and outside nations to increase the free flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, where more than two million Palestinians have struggled to obtain food and water.
Because Houthi territory abuts a vital waterway that ships must pass to reach the Suez Canal, the attacks have disrupted global trade, pushing container ships to take a longer route around the southern tip of Africa. The Houthis say they are attacking ships with Israeli or American ties, although many of the targeted vessels have had no clear link to either country.
The United States and Britain began bombarding Houthi targets last year, saying they were attempting to halt the attacks on shipping and Israel.
The militia briefly stopped firing rockets at Israel during a two-month cease-fire between Israel and Hamas this year. But after a truce ended in mid-March, Israel renewed its offensive in Gaza and the Houthis resumed firing ballistic missiles at Israeli territory.
The Trump administration began its own campaign of airstrikes in March.
American strikes that hit a vital port in the region of Hudaydah this month killed at least 74 people, health officials under the Houthi-led government said.
U.S. Central Command said that it had targeted the port because shipments of fuel were still flowing into it in defiance of American sanctions, allowing funds to flow into the Houthis’ coffers. It did not provide its own assessment of how many people had been killed in the bombardment.
Secretary General António Guterres of the United Nations expressed “grave concern” over those strikes, saying in a statement that at least five humanitarian workers were said to be among the injured and urging all parties in the conflict to respect international law and protect civilian infrastructure.
So far, the American campaign has not appeared to have deterred the Houthis, who have continued to announce attacks on Israel and ships. Yemeni scholars who study the group warn that American airstrikes will simply play into the militia’s agenda.
Arijeta Lajka and Aric Toler contributed reporting.
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