Houthis in Russia seek 'pressure' on US, Israel to end Gaza carnage

A Houthi delegation has discussed during a rare visit to Moscow "the need to increase efforts to pressure" the United States and Israel to end the Gaza war, a spokesman for the Yemeni group said.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdel Salam met as the head of a group delegation with Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov to discuss Israel's war on besieged Gaza, he said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.

Abdel Salam said the meeting with Bogdanov discussed the US and British strikes on Yemen, affirming that it was more pressing for the United States to "stop the aggression on the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian assistance there rather than militarise the Red Sea".

The Russian Foreign Ministry meanwhile "strongly condemned" the US and British strikes during the talks with the Houthis, saying they were "capable of destabilising the situation on a regional scale".

Targeting 'Israel-linked' ships

The Houthis have since mid-November launched frequent attacks on what they say are Israel-linked ships traversing the Red Sea in a bid to pressure Israel to end its brutal siege and war in Gaza, threatening trade through the commercially vital route.

Russia has been trying to bolster its standing in the Middle East in recent years, and has growing ties with Iran, the Houthis' main backer.

Abdel Malek al Houthi, a Yemeni politician who serves as the leader of the Houthi movement, said on Thursday in a speech: "Since the beginning of the offence, with aid raids on our country, and missiles strikes from the sea, the Americans were not able to stop our strikes in the sea and our targeting of ships. But they got themselves, as well as the British, in this problem [conflict]."

As recently as Wednesday, two American-flagged ships carrying cargo for the US Defense and State departments came under attack by Houthi rebels, US officials said, with the US Navy saying it intercepted some of the incoming fire.

The US and UK on Thursday imposed sanctions on four leaders of the group.

Houthi leaders — members of a former rebel group originally from the remote mountains of northwest Yemen — are generally seen as having few assets within reach of US or UK authorities to be affected by the sanctions.

Around 12 percent of global trade normally passes through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea's entrance between southwest Yemen and Djibouti, but the Houthi attacks have caused much shipping to be diverted thousands of miles around Africa.