Israel-Hamas War: U.S. and U.K. Shoot Down ‘Complex’ Houthi Attack in Red Sea

The Biden administration and a number of international allies said last week that they would hold the Houthis responsible for the attacks, a warning that suggested the government may be considering retaliatory strikes on Houthi territory in Yemen, military officials said. Rather than back off, the Houthis appear to have stepped up their attacks.

“These attacks are unlawful, they’re reckless and they’re escalatory,” John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said at a press briefing on Wednesday.

“We’re going to do everything we have to do to protect shipping in the Red Sea,” he added, but he declined to elaborate.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, speaking in a news conference on Wednesday in Manama, Bahrain, the latest stop on his Mideast tour, declined to say what actions might be coming. “What I can tell you is that, as we made clear, and many other countries made clear, there’ll be consequences for the Houthis’ actions,” he said.

He also said that the United States and other nations had repeatedly made clear to Iran that its support for the Houthis’ actions had to stop. A State Department readout of his meeting with Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, said the two had discussed the Houthi attacks and the U.S.-led multinational naval task that Bahrain has joined, which aims to protect maritime traffic in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden

So far, the United States has held back from hitting Houthi bases in Yemen, in large part because it does not want to undermine a fragile truce in Yemen’s civil war. Pentagon officials have drawn up plans for striking missile and drone bases in Yemen and facilities places where fast boats used to attack ships appear to be moored.

Britain’s defense secretary, Grant Shapps, said in an interview on British television that London was also considering taking military action if the Houthi attacks did not stop. “The simplest thing to say is ‘watch this space,’” he said.

On Tuesday, fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and four other warships intercepted “a complex attack” involving 18 drones, two anti-ship cruise missiles and one anti-ship ballistic missile, the U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement. No injuries or damage were reported, the command said.

Mr. Shapps said that the Diamond, a British Navy destroyer, had also responded to repel the Houthis’ “largest attack” since they began targeting ships in the Red Sea.

A Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said in a statement on Wednesday that the group’s forces had used “a large number” of missiles and drones to target an American ship “that was offering support to the Zionist entity.” It was not immediately clear if he was describing the attack on Tuesday.

Mr. Sarea said the attack it described was in response to an assault by the U.S. Navy 10 days ago that sank three Houthi boats, killing their crew members. The Navy has said the boats fired on American helicopters coming to aid a Maersk cargo ship.

The Houthis “will continue to prevent Israeli ships or those headed to the ports of occupied Palestine from sailing in the Arabian and Red Seas until the aggression stops and the siege on our steadfast brothers in Gaza is lifted,” Mr. Sarea said.

The United States and a dozen allies issued an ultimatum to the Iran-backed Houthis last week to cease their near-daily attacks that have disrupted shipping in the crucial sea lanes that connect the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal. The Houthis have promised to attack ships until Israel stops the war in the Gaza Strip, where it has been fighting for more than three months.

The rising tensions in the Red Sea have fueled concerns of a wider conflict in the region with militias and groups tied to Iran.

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Manama, Bahrain.

The Biden administration has said it envisions a role for the Palestinian Authority in governing both the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas took control of the tiny coastal strip in 2007 and violently drove out Fatah, the group now in charge of the authority in the West Bank.

President Biden has also said Israel must allow for the formation of a Palestinian state, arguing that a political solution is the only way out of the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Mr. Blinken reiterated that view in a news conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday after meetings with Israeli officials. He also said Saudi Arabia — whose ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he met with on Monday — was still willing to consider establishing normal diplomatic relations with Israel, but only if Israel agreed to concrete steps toward the establishment of a free and independent Palestine.

In their meeting, Mr. Abbas told Mr. Blinken that the Palestinians would not accept what he called Israeli plans to keep Gaza separate from the West Bank, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency. “The Gaza Strip is part and parcel of the state of Palestine,” the agency quoted him as saying.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and his right-wing government have rejected the notion of a Palestinian state, and Mr. Netanyahu said years ago that Israeli officials should support a strong Hamas in Gaza in order to undermine the Palestinian Authority and the idea of a unified Palestine. He has also rejected any substantial role for the authority in Gaza.

After meeting with Mr. Abbas, Mr. Blinken flew to Bahrain for more talks on the war. The Bahrain stop was a last-minute addition to his multiday diplomatic mission across the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East that began last Friday.

Speaking in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, Mr. Blinken said he had spoken with Mr. Abbas about the need to make changes to the Palestinian Authority to make it more effective as a governing organization. He said Mr. Abbas was “committed” to that.

“He’s prepared to move forward and engage in all of these efforts,” Mr. Blinken said, adding that this would be an important step toward an eventual goal of uniting the West Bank and Gaza under one governing body.

Critics say the authority, which has limited governing powers in the West Bank, has become more autocratic and corrupt over the years.

A senior Palestinian Authority official with knowledge of the meeting said the authority had given Mr. Blinken a written proposal for reforms on freedom of speech, corruption, health care and other areas — but only in the context of a broader deal on ending the war and then governing and rebuilding Gaza.

The authority’s terms, the official said, include returning the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, where it was forced out in a brief, bloody conflict with Hamas in 2007, and a plan for a long-term resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mr. Blinken planned to meet in Cairo later in the trip with the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Mr. Abbas, after the meeting with Mr. Blinken, traveled to Aqaba, Jordan, joining Mr. el-Sisi at a meeting called by King Abdullah II. They discussed securing an “immediate” cease-fire in Gaza and delivering aid there, according to a statement from Egypt’s presidential office.

The three leaders emphasized that displaced Gazans must be able to return home. In an apparent reference to remarks by two far-right Israeli officials suggesting that Palestinians should emigrate from the territory and Israeli settlements be re-established there, the statement rejected any effort to remove Gazans and “any attempts to reoccupy parts of Gaza.”

Reporting was contributed by Adam Rasgon from Jerusalem and Vivian Yee from Cairo.

— Edward Wong reporting from Tel Aviv and Manama, Bahrain

“Our colleagues were intentionally targeted while inside an ambulance clearly marked with the Red Crescent emblem,” the aid group said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Another Israeli airstrike landed in the immediate vicinity of Al-Aqsa hospital earlier Wednesday, killing several people, Al Jazeera reported. The strikes deepened a crisis at what the United Nations has called the only functioning hospital left in central Gaza.

The Red Crescent said the crew members killed on Wednesday were Yusuf Abu Ma’mar, the driver of the ambulance; Fadi Al-Maani, a medic; Islam Abu Riyala, an emergency medical worker; and Fuad Abu Khamash, a volunteer photographer. The two wounded people they were transporting also died, the aid group said.

Footage captured by a Palestinian photojournalist, Motaz Azaiza, showed the harrowing aftermath of the strike that hit the ambulance, as friends and colleagues of the victims howled in grief. Tattered remnants of the Red Crescent emblems that the ambulance crew had been wearing were placed on top of their mangled remains.

The ambulance crew had responded to a call to help two people who had gunshot wounds, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the Red Crescent. The crew had treated their injuries and were moving to transfer them to the hospital. The ambulance had just turned off a main thoroughfare, Salah al-Din Street, and onto a back road toward the hospital when it was hit, she said.

Ms. Farsakh said the slain photographer, Mr. Abu Khamash, had volunteered to document the aid group’s efforts to provide medical care to Gazans under Israeli bombardment.

Ms. Farsakh said Mr. Abu Khamash was the first person she tried to contact on Wednesday when she learned that one of the group’s ambulances had been hit, hoping that he could help verify the news.

“Then I figured out that he is among the ones that were killed,” she said. “I just — it’s heartbreaking.”

Instead, they have stressed that Israel and the United States must implement a cease-fire, and then create a serious pathway toward creating a Palestinian state. The Biden administration is also calling for Palestinian statehood, which Israel’s government opposes.

“Without a stable, independent sovereign nation for the Palestinians, nothing else matters, because it will not come up with a long-term solution for the conflict that we’re seeing,” Prince Khalid bin Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom, told the BBC on Tuesday.

And on Sunday, during a news conference with Mr. Blinken, Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman of Qatar said, “There is no peace in the region without a comprehensive and just settlement.”

Officially, Arab governments have mostly dismissed the notion that they could participate in postwar planning before a cease-fire, arguing that this would be akin to helping Israel clean up its mess. And they are reluctant to be seen participating in Israeli visions for Gaza’s future.

But Arab and U.S. officials also assert that the Palestinian Authority, undermined by successive Israeli governments, is the natural candidate to govern postwar Gaza. That stance has not changed despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all but ruling out any role there for the authority.

On Monday, when Mr. Abbas met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, it was partly to coordinate positions on Gaza, a Palestinian official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The official noted that Mr. Abbas was pressing for a united Arab position that supports a broader Israeli-Palestinian settlement, rather than dealing with Gaza in isolation.

Mr. Abbas participated in a summit in Jordan on Wednesday with King Abdullah and Mr. Sisi to discuss the situation in Gaza. Mr. Abbas hopes that a committee including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinians will convene in the future to further coordinate diplomatic efforts, the Palestinian official said.

“What’s taking place is consensus-building on the different pathways to the day after,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a London-based research group.

Arab public opinion — deeply hostile toward Israel and the United States, especially since the war began — is important, said Bader Al-Saif, a professor at Kuwait University.

“Any day-after scenario that doesn’t meet the masses’ quest for dignity and justice for Palestinians will eventually bite the different states of the region,” he said. “I’d keep that in mind if I were a policymaker.”

Arab countries have different views about what a future government in Gaza should look like, and how capable the Palestinian Authority is of taking over. Before the war, Gaza was ruled for years by Hamas, the armed group that carried out the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.

Palestinian analysts say that to govern Gaza, Fatah, the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party, would have to achieve unity with Hamas. They predicted that Hamas would remain a critical part of Palestinian politics, though Israel has repeatedly said it will not stop fighting until Hamas is destroyed.

In 2007, Hamas seized power in Gaza while the Palestinian Authority retained limited control of the West Bank, dividing Palestinians territorially and politically.

“Abbas and the Palestinian Authority want to bring Gaza back under their administration — they believe the war has created a major opportunity for them,” said Jehad Harb, a Ramallah-based analyst. “But without reconciling with Hamas, they will struggle to govern there. ”

Ms. Patten “plans on briefing the media on the basis of the findings of her visit upon return to New York,” said Géraldine Boezio, a spokeswoman for her office.

On Wednesday, a Hamas spokesman, Dr. Basem Naim, said that “in principle,” Hamas welcomed “any neutral, fair, transparent and professional investigation” so long as the process involved “investigating both sides and building its judgment on genuine” evidence. The statement insisted that evidence of sexual assault should come from “biological samples” obtained through forensic examinations.

In cases of widespread sexual violence during a war, experts say it is not unusual to have limited forensic evidence. Adil Haque, a Rutgers law professor and war crimes expert, said: “Armed conflict is so chaotic. People are more focused on their safety than on building a criminal case down the road.”

Very often, he said, sex crime cases will be prosecuted years later on the basis of testimony from victims and witnesses. “The eyewitness might not even know the name of the victim,” he added. “But if they can testify as, ‘I saw a woman being raped by this armed group,’ that can be enough.”

Last month, The New York Times published an investigation that uncovered new details showing a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The Times verified video footage and used photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, to establish that the attacks were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence.

In response to the Times investigation, Hamas said in a statement that the group’s leaders “categorically deny such allegations” and called them a part of Israel’s attempt to justify the killing of Palestinian civilians.

The group’s statement on Dec. 31 added that Hamas fighters’ “religion, values and culture” forbid such acts, and asserted that the short duration of the attack before the assailants withdrew to Gaza made the allegations implausible. It said it would welcome any international inquiries into the allegations.

Hamas has also denied committing atrocities against civilians in the Oct. 7 attack, but extensive witness testimony and documentary evidence, including videos posted on social media by Hamas fighters, indicate that Hamas gunmen in uniform killed civilians in their homes, in cars, on the streets and in other settings.

On Monday, two U.N. human rights experts said that the violence committed during the Hamas-led incursion, including sexual atrocities, amounted to war crimes, if not crimes against humanity. In its statement on Wednesday, Hamas said those experts did not “have access to the investigators’ evidence.”

A U.N. school in central Gaza sheltering people displaced by the fighting was also hit by shelling, along with residential buildings, resulting in an unconfirmed number of deaths and injuries, the U.N. said on Tuesday.

Four people were also injured, including a 5-year-old girl who was left in critical condition, after a shell “broke through a wall” at a Doctors Without Borders shelter in Khan Younis that was housing more than 100 staff members and their families, the aid group said on Monday.

“We’re trying to understand what happened,” the organization said on social media. “MSF had informed Israeli forces that this was an MSF shelter,” it said, using the initials of its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières. “We did not receive evacuation orders.”

The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency, expressed alarm on Tuesday at the Gazan health system’s loss of capacity, as Israeli evacuation notices and heavy bombardments force doctors and nurses to flee.

“We are seeing a humanitarian catastrophe unfold before our eyes across the Gaza Strip,” Sean Casey, the W.H.O. emergency medical team coordinator in Gaza, told reporters. “We are seeing the health system collapse at a very rapid pace.”

On visits on Sunday to Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza and Nasser Hospital in the south, Mr. Casey said he found that 70 percent of the medical staff had fled in recent days because of Israeli orders to evacuate and intense fighting in the area. That left a handful of medical staff to treat large numbers of seriously injured people, including many children. Around 600 patients left Al Aqsa Hospital on Sunday, moving to already overcrowded hospitals in the south.

“We cannot lose these health facilities — they absolutely must be protected,” he added, referring to the Aqsa, Nasser and European hospitals. “This is the last line of secondary and tertiary health care that Gaza has. From the north to the south, it has been dropping, hospital after hospital.”

Three weeks after a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for accelerated deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the U.N. said that access for aid groups continues to shrink because of the fighting, a lack of corridors for safe movement of aid trucks and a lack of clearance from Israel to proceed.

“We have far fewer areas in the Gaza Strip where we can access, where we can deliver supplies, where we can take emergency medical teams,” Mr. Casey said. “We have the supplies here, we have the trucks loaded, the people who are ready to go into the hospitals. We cannot move.”

The W.H.O. said that in the past two weeks it had canceled six planned missions to northern Gaza because it did not receive the clearances needed to proceed.

“We see evacuation orders in new areas every couple of days,” Mr. Casey said. “We request coordination, we coordinate with parties to the conflict so that we can move safely, and those requests have consistently, for the past few days, been denied.”

“Every day we make a plan, every day we line up our convoys, we wait for clearance and we don’t get it,” he said, “and then we come back and do it again the next day.”

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the U.N.’s accusations. Israel has said that the militant group Hamas, which it aims to eliminate in Gaza, uses hospitals and other civilian infrastructure to hide fighters and weapons.

In the most deadly of Monday’s incidents, a truck full of explosives blew up in the Bureij area of central Gaza, during what Israeli authorities said was a military operation to destroy an underground rocket and explosives manufacturing facility. The blast killed six soldiers and injured at least eight others, including the “Fauda” actor Idan Amedi.

Although the exact cause of the explosion had not been determined by Tuesday evening, a preliminary investigation suggested that it was inadvertently caused by fire from an Israeli tank, said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israeli military.

For safety reasons, most soldiers had been ordered to leave the site where a small crew of combat engineers was preparing the explosives, Admiral Hagari said, and a tank was stationed nearby to secure the area and provide cover. Then the tank identified what was thought to be a threat.

“The tank opened fire at the threat, and in a tragic outcome, struck an electricity pole nearby, knocking it over and igniting the explosives,” Admiral Hagari said.

According to The Times of Israel, the army was leading journalists on a tour of a Hamas rocket manufacturing plant not far from where the explosion occurred. A reporter with The Times of Israel said he heard the blast and saw an explosion burst through the air, capturing it on film.

The three other soldiers killed on Monday died in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the army said, describing operations there as troops destroying dozens of tunnel shafts and underground “terrorist infrastructure.” One soldier was killed in fighting and two were killed by anti-tank fire, the army said.

Israel said its military was consolidating its hold on the region, but that heavy clashes ensued after dozens of Hamas gunmen emerged from underground tunnels as Israeli troops approached. The gunmen were met with gunfire and killed, the army said.

The army said its troops in Khan Younis had discovered “terrorist infrastructure” inside the Islamic University in Gaza, including caches of ammunition composed of AK-47 rifles and cartridges, as well as safes containing what it called “terror funds.” In searches of nearby areas, the military said it found storage facilities for weapons containing roughly 100 mortar shells, ready-to-use explosives, grenades, combat equipment and maps used by Hamas.

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.

In a statement, Hezbollah denied the Israeli military’s claims about Mr. Burji’s role and involvement in the drone strike, calling them “baseless.” It had announced Mr. Burji’s death earlier in the day without providing details, and before that, said its strike on Safed was in retaliation for the killing on Monday of Wissam Hassan al-Tawil, a senior commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, appeared to claim responsibility for Mr. al-Tawil’s killing in a television interview late Monday. “This is part of our war,” Mr. Katz said in response to a question about the attack on the Radwan unit. “We strike on Hezbollah’s people.”

Mr. al-Tawil’s funeral was held on Tuesday, with a large procession of mourners carrying his coffin through Khirbet Selm, the village in southern Lebanon where he was killed. A Lebanese security official had earlier said that Israel carried out a strike during the gathering and killed one person.

The New York Times was able to geolocate footage of the airstrike released by the military, confirming that it took place in the vicinity of the funeral in Khirbet Selm.

Hezbollah also said it fired at several areas in northern Israel, including Malkia and Yiftah, on Tuesday. The Israeli military later said it targeted the launch sites for the attacks in retaliation, as well as a drone squad in southern Lebanon, and that Israeli fighter jets had struck military hardware in the area of Kafr Kila.

Earlier Tuesday, Israel also killed three Hezbollah members in a strike on their vehicle in the southern Lebanese town of Ghandouriyeh, according to the Lebanese security official.

Hezbollah has pledged support for Hamas, and in recent days it has stepped up assaults on Israel in response to the killing last week of Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader, outside Beirut.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly declared in recent weeks that there are only two options for restoring calm in the conflict with Hezbollah: a diplomatic solution that would move the Radwan forces farther from the border; or, failing that, a major Israeli military offensive aimed at achieving the same goal.

Johnatan Reiss and Arijeta Lajka contributed reporting.