Yemen’s Armed Forces have announced carrying out a preemptive strike against a United States aircraft carrier deployed off the Arab Peninsula country’s coastline as part of Washington’s continued support for the Israeli regime, besides confirming escalation of their operations against Israeli targets.

Spokesman Yahya Saree announced the developments in a statement on Wednesday, saying the forces had, for the fourth time within 72 hours, conducted a “joint operation” against USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea.

The operation came after the troops “monitored hostile military movements in the Red Sea in preparation for a large-scale aerial attack against Yemen,” he said, adding that several other warships had also been targeted during the strike.

The troops deployed “a number of cruise missiles and drones” against the vessels during the strike, Saree noted.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced issuing an executive order that had mandated deployment of “overwhelming lethal force” against the already impoverished nation that had recently resumed a ban on Israeli ships from crossing key maritime regions.

Subsequently, American warplanes conducted extensive raids against purely civilian targets throughout Yemen, claiming the lives of scores of non-combatants.

Under the directive of the leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the country’s forces initiated strikes on critical Israeli targets in October 2023. The operations came in response to the Israeli regime’s launch of a US-backed war of genocide against the Gaza Strip alongside a simultaneous severe restriction of the flow of essential aid, including food and medicine, into the Palestinian territory.

The strikes, along with operations targeting Israeli ships transporting military hardware and commercial goods to the occupied Palestinian territories, inflicted substantial economic damage on the regime.

The forces stopped the strikes against Israeli and Israeli-linked vessels after implementation of a ceasefire agreement between the regime and the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas, but resumed the operations when Tel Aviv began routinely violating the deal.

Trump withheld any mention of the Israeli regime in his announcement of the executive order, instead accusing Sana’a of disrupting “international navigation.”

This is while the Yemeni strikes have just been hitting Israeli vessels and the vessels that are associated with the regime.

Rebuffing the US president’s allegations, several Yemeni officials have likewise reaffirmed the scope of Sana’a’s operations, and assured that Yemen’s operations did not threaten other vessels.

‘Yemen to stay unbowed’

Adding to his remarks, Saree underscored that “the American aggression will not deter Yemen from fulfilling its religious, moral, and humanitarian duties towards the Palestinian people.”

He, meanwhile, confirmed that the Armed Forces had initiated “escalation of military operations against the Zionist enemy unless the brutal aggression on Gaza stops and the siege is lifted.”

The remarks came after the forces said they had carried out a successful operation against the Israeli regime’s Nevatim Airbase, from which the attacks on Gaza are being carried out, using a hypersonic ballistic missile codenamed “Palestine-2.”

Announcing that development on Tuesday, Saree said the strike had “achieved its objective.”