Yemen airstrikes latest: Starmer backs Yemen action as he and Cameron say ‘doing nothing’ not an option

Egypt and China are closely following developments in the Red Sea, focusing on the priority of ensuring the safety and security of navigation, the two countries said in a joint statement on Sunday.

Both expressed concern over the expansion of the conflict in the region, emphasizing the importance of efforts to stop attacks on Gaza, the statement added.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, speaking at a press conference in Cairo after a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, called for an end to the attacks on civilian vessels in the Red Sea, though he did not mention the Iran-backed Houthi militia responsible for those attacks.

“The situation in the Red Sea has escalated sharply recently, and China is deeply concerned about this,” Wang said.

“China calls for a halt to the harassment and attacks on civilian ships and for the maintenance of the smooth flow of global industrial and supply chains and the international trade order.”

“The adding of fuel to the fire of tensions in the Red Sea should be avoided and an increase in the overall security risk of the region should be prevented,” Wang said, without naming the United States and Britain.

Wang added that while it was necessary for all parties to jointly maintain the safety of the Red Sea waterways in the accordance with the law, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries on both sides of the Red Sea, including Yemen, must be respected.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Sunday that the United States was wrong if it thought the Houthis of Yemen would stop confronting Israel in the Red Sea, saying U.S. actions there had endangered all maritime navigation.

Describing U.S. and British strikes on Yemen as an act of stupidity, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Houthis would continue targeting ships belonging to Israel and going to its ports.

“The more dangerous thing is what the Americans did in the Red Sea will harm all maritime navigation, even the ships that are not going to Palestine, even the ships which are not Israeli, even the ships that have nothing to do with the matter, because the sea has become a theatre of fighting, missiles, drones and war ships,” he said.

“Security has been disrupted.”

The shadow cabinet is more deeply divided than it appears. Labour is still subject to less media scrutiny than the Conservatives, despite the widespread assumption that Keir Starmer will become prime minister this year.

Most Labour MPs are also more disciplined than most Tory MPs because they can feel election victory within their grasp, whereas the Tories are either fed up or have given up, and so are happier to be rude about each other in private and in public.

As ever in politics, Labour’s divisions are a mixture of the personal and the ideological, and foreign policy is one of the hidden fractures threatening the foundations of an incoming government.

The attacks came after the Houthis launched their largest attack on Red Sea shipping, one of 27 such assaults since 19 November.

Officials said that 21 missiles and drones were fired at warships and commercial vessels near the Bab al-Mandab Strait earlier this week, the southern bottleneck of the Red Sea, with US and UK warships blowing them out of the sky.

Here is what we know so far:

Germany is expected to participate in a European Union naval mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea that EU foreign ministers will approve this month, the head of the German parliamentary defence committee said.

Speaking at her party’s reception for the new year on Sunday, Maria-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann said the aim of the mission would be for EU frigates to protect commercial vessels passing through the strait.

The approaches to the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, have been all but paralysed by attacks on passing vessels by Iran-backed Houthi forces on the Yemen coast.

“This is an attack on free trade and has to be countered,” Strack-Zimmermann said. Newspaper Welt am Sonntag earlier reported that the German frigate Hessen would set sail for the Red Sea on Feb. 1.

Parliament must approve any foreign deployment of Germany’s armed forces.

Lord Cameron has denied RAF strikes in Yemen will escalate the picture in the Middle East, as he warned the world faces a period of great peril.

The Foreign Secretary insisted it was the Houthi rebels who had taken steps to escalate conflict in the region with their attacks on container ships passing through the Red Sea.

The militant group, which backs Hamas, claims they have targeted ships with links to Israel.

The Houthis’ actions have posed a threat to the flow of global trade, disrupting merchant vessels from passing through the sea to the Suez Canal, a route which serves 15% of world shipping.

The Foreign Secretary denied that the UK had escalated the situation by taking part in US-led air strikes on Houthi military facilities across Yemen overnight on Thursday.

He had previously warned the RAF could join the USA in further strikes against the Houthis in order to deter their attacks.

“The escalation has been caused by the Houthis. I mean the point is since November 19, you have had these 26 attacks”, Lord Cameron told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

He added: “There have been more of them, they have been getting worse, and you know, not acting is also a policy, it is a policy that doesn’t work.”

Huge explosions were seen in Yemeni cities including Sana’a and Hodeidah in the early hours of Friday, with the US military saying 60 strikes were launched against 16 sites linked to the Houthis’ military operations.

Below, The Independent looks at how the attacks unfolded and what weapons were used in the strikes.

Sir Keir Starmer has watered down promises to introduce a law giving MPs a vote before military intervention and to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia.

The Labour leader insisted on Sunday that there is “no inconsistency” between his previous promise to give the Commons a say before authorising action and his support for strikes against Houthis.

But his comments marked another change to his past pledges which will further raise concerns on the left and leave him open to Conservative accusations of “flip-flopping”.