On Friday, the Trump administration launched a major airstrike against the Ras Isa oil port in western Yemen that resulted in the deaths of at least 80 people and injured over 150 others. Among the injured were port workers and civilians, as well as rescue personnel who were responding to the initial blast and who were then hit by a second, follow-up strike.
The strikes were the deadliest action ordered by President Donald Trump since the administration began an intensified bombing campaign last month in retaliation for Houthi attacks on Israel related to the Gaza genocide and US ships in the Red Sea.
The attack on the port began late Thursday, and it sent massive fireballs shooting into the night sky. The Houthis’ Al-Masirah satellite news channel broadcast graphic footage of the aftermath and showed corpses of dead people strewn across the site. Al-Masirah TV also reported that a total of 14 airstrikes hit Ras Isa.
A report in the New York Times said,
The bombing’s deadly toll plunged Hudaydah into grief, said Manal Ahmad, 35, who lives in the city. She said she personally knew families who had lost loved ones, and social media was full of posts mourning those killed.
“We saw the images of the victims and the extent of the destruction,” Ms. Ahmad said in a phone interview. “What legitimate target are they talking about? Whatever the goal was—if there even was one—I don’t think it justifies the number of dead and wounded.”
Ras Isa is a fuel port and oil storage facility in Yemen’s Hodeida governorate and located along the Red Sea. It is situated approximately 35 miles north of the port city of Hodeidah, which has a population of 735,000. Ras Isa is also close to Kamaran Island, which has been the target of recent US airstrikes. The port has a storage capacity of 3 million barrels.
The strikes on Hudaydah’s ports are also a deliberate attack on the impoverished people of northern Yemen, who depend on the port region as the main conduit for fuel, food and aid for more than 20 million people.
In typical form, a statement from Central Command claimed the US
took action to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years.
Then in a statement of utter hypocrisy that is the calling card of US imperialism, the Pentagon said:
This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully.
When asked by the Associated Press about civilian casualties in the attack, the Pentagon refused to acknowledge any and declined to comment.
The attack on Thursday and Friday was a major escalation of the imperialist bullying by the Trump administration against the Houthi movement that dominates much of northwestern Yemen. The Ras Isa port is a critical fuel and oil hub in northern Yemen, and it is a strategic target for US imperialism.
The US Department of Defense (DOD) said the operation was aimed at disrupting the Houthis’ financial resources by destroying infrastructure tied to oil exports and fuel imports. The strikes were part of a Pentagon campaign dubbed “Operation Rough Rider,” which began in March 2025.
The aim is to impose US control over strategic Red Sea maritime routes and retaliate against Houthi missile and drone attacks, particularly those launched in solidarity with Palestinians, who are facing a genocidal campaign of extermination by the Israeli government in Gaza and the West Bank.
Additionally, the global strategic concerns behind the attack were revealed when US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a briefing with journalists that Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co. Ltd., a commercial satellite image provider, was guilty of “directly supporting Iran-backed Houthi terrorist attacks on U.S. interests.”
The Trump official did not elaborate on any details but instead referred to a story by the Financial Times that quoted anonymous American officials saying the firm was linked to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and has provided images enabling the rebels to target US warships and commercial vessels traveling through the Red Sea.
The Houthis condemned the strikes as war crimes and accused the US of targeting civilian infrastructure and intentionally causing mass casualties. In response, the Houthis said they launched retaliatory strikes on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Gulf of Oman. As of this writing, however, attempts by US news outlets to confirm with Central Command the Houthi retaliatory strikes have not been successful.
The Houthis also fired a missile at Israel shortly after the US air attack. Air raid sirens went off across Israel’s heartland with many instructed to head to bomb shelters. So far, there have been no news reports of any casualties.
The criminal nature of the attack on Ras Isa was accentuated by the fact that the US launched two strikes that were deliberately timed to cause maximum casualties. The “double tap” or “double strike,” which became a specialty during the Obama administration’s drone assassination program in both Yemen and Pakistan, is a tactic that involves striking the same location with two munitions, usually separated by a short time frame, aiming to maximize casualties by hitting those who rush to the scene to help after the first strike.
Iran and Hamas denounced the US strikes as a violation of international law and acts of aggressive war. The French news agency AFP reported that Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Tehran “strongly condemned the barbaric US air strike,” saying it is “an example of aggressive crime and a blatant violation of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter.”
The latest deadly air attack on Yemen comes three and a half weeks after the leak of military information to The Atlantic magazine by senior members of the Trump administration involving an earlier bombing that killed at least 53 people, including five children.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, wrote on March 24 that he was inadvertently added to a group Signal chat, which included senior Trump administration officials, including US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and discussed details of the imminent air strikes.
The fallout from the breach was seized on by the Democratic Party to criticize the Trump administration’s lax data management practices as a threat to American military security that required a major congressional investigation. None of the Democrats had anything to say about the criminal nature of the military operation or the cavalier manner in which top Trump officials—such as Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—discussed operations in which innocent Yemeni civilians would be murdered.