US strike on Ras Isa immediately impacts Yemen's civilians, not Houthis, experts say

The rebel group has made contingency plans for strikes that aim to cut off its fuel supplies

Yemeni children carry a box of relief supplies and water containers donated by the United Nations Children's Fund at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Sanaa, the rebel-held capital. EPA

The US strikes on the Houthi-controlled oil port of Ras Isa on Friday morning, which it said were intended to cut the group off from a main source of revenue, will affect ordinary Yemenis rather then the rebels themselves, experts say.

Friday's attacks killed at least 74 people and wounded 171 others, Houthi authorities reported. The death toll could rise, with some workers at the port still unaccounted for.

"We have endured a difficult night and looked for him among charred bodies, but we couldn't find anything," the aunt of one worker, Abdulfattah, 26, told The National. She said he went missing on the night of the attack along with two colleagues.

The US military's Central Command said the attack on Ras Isa aimed to cut off fuel supplies that the Houthis use "to sustain their military operations, as weapon of control, and to benefit economically from embezzling the profits from the import".

While it is true that Ras Isa is a terminus for a pipeline that delivers oil from Yemen's Marib province, and is primarily used to bring in fuel to Houthi-controlled territories, research by Basha Report, a US-based risk advisory firm, has found that the group has enough fuel stores to last them three months.

"Since the Israeli air strikes began in July 2024, the group has decentralised its fuel storage network," Mohammad Al Basha, the firm's founder, told The National.

The Houthi fuel stocks are distributed among public and privately owned petrol stations, tanks and mobile fuel tankers, he said. The group has taken this approach to pre-empt damage to their revenue and supplies from attacks like the one on Friday.

This means that the immediate impact of the strikes of Ras Isa will be felt by civilians, who are already struggling with the dire humanitarian crisis in the country.

A drone view shows charred vehicles standing in the aftermath of what Houthi-run Al Masirah TV said was a US strike on the Ras Isa fuel port in this screengrab from a handout video released on April 18. Al Masirah TV via Reuters

Abdulghani Al Iryani is a senior researcher at the Sanaa Centre for Strategic Studies and worked with United Nations Development Programme’s mission in Hodeidah province, where the Ras Isa port is located.

He said efforts to cut the Houthis off from one of their primary sources of revenue had already been tried.

Whenever this had been done on a significant scale, it had left hospitals unable to run their generators and water projects unable to pump water – which meant farmers could not irrigate their fields. This had affected agricultural production for a population already on the edge of famine, he said.

"It was a hardship that the population had to endure while the people in power did not feel anything."

The US began launching strikes on the Houthis to stop the group's launching missiles and drones at ships in the Red Sea and towards Israel, in what the rebels say is a response to the Israeli military offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 51,000 people since October 7, 2023.

Under the Biden administration, the US strikes targeted Houthi weapons depots, the rebel-controlled port of Hodeidah, and other strategic sites. The attacks have intensified under President Donald Trump, who assumed office in January, and aimed to target the Houthi leadership and the group's infrastructure.

The nearly daily US strikes since March 15 have hit Sanaa's international airport, power stations and residential buildings, killing dozens of Yemenis and wounding hundreds others, according to the Houthis, although the exact death toll remains unclear.

"The Houthis have deliberately embedded their infrastructure within densely populated civilian areas, making it exceedingly challenging to degrade their capabilities without harming civilians," said Joe Truzman, senior researcher at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies think tank.

"It is a calculated and morally troubling strategy to ensure the group's continued survival."