US agrees to ceasefire with Houthis in Yemen after dozens killed in airstrikes

US President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will immediately suspend its bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, following what he described as an Iran-aligned group’s commitment to “stop targeting shipping” in the Red Sea.

Speaking from the Oval Office alongside Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, Trump said, “The Houthis have announced … that they don’t want to fight any more. They just don’t want to fight. And we will honour that, and we will stop the bombings, and they have capitulated,” Caliber.Az reports, citing UK media. 

He added, “I will accept their word, and we are going to stop the bombing … effective immediately.”

Details of the purported agreement remain scant, and Houthi spokespeople had not responded to requests for confirmation by press time. The U.S. began ramping up air strikes in mid-March, targeting more than 1,000 locations—including missile sites and drone facilities—and has claimed to have “degraded” the group’s strike capabilities.

Human rights groups and local officials reported several civilian casualties, notably on April 18 when a strike on the Ras Isa fuel port in Hodeidah killed at least 80 people and wounded 150, and another raid on a detention centre in Saada allegedly killed 68 foreign nationals. The U.S. maintains the operation is an act of self-defence, launched in response to Houthi missile and drone attacks on commercial and naval vessels transiting the Suez Canal.

Earlier on May 6, Israel said its warplanes had “fully disabled” Yemen’s main Sana’a airport—including three civilian aircraft on the ground—in retaliation for a Sunday missile that landed within the perimeter of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. An Israeli Defence Forces statement said, “Flight runways, aircraft and infrastructure at the airport were struck.” 

A Yemeni official countered that the airport had been “completely destroyed,” with three of seven Yemenia Airlines planes among the wreckage.

Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, warned that the recent exchanges marked “a grave escalation in an already fragile and volatile regional context.” Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, characterised the strike as a message to the “head of the Iranian octopus,” accusing Tehran of directing Houthi hostilities against Israel.

By Khagan Isayev