WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Yemen’s Houthi rebels have informed the White House they will not be carrying out additional attacks on commercial ships, saying the US will reciprocate by halting attacks on Yemen.

"We will take their word. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that's what the purpose of what we were doing," Trump told reporters as he hosted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House. "We will honor that and we will stop the bombings."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio further said that US strikes were always seeking to establish freedom of navigation for international shipping in the region, and that "the job was to get that to stop, and if it's going to stop, then we can stop."

Yemen has faced an intensified US military campaign since mid-March, including around 1,300 air and naval strikes, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties, according to the Houthis.

The group have targeted ships passing through the Red and Arabian seas, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and the Gulf of Aden since November 2023 in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where more than 52,600 people have been killed, most of them women and children, during the course of Israel’s indiscriminate war.

The group halted attacks when a Gaza ceasefire was declared in January between Israel and Hamas, but resumed them after Israel's renewed airstrikes on Gaza in March.

Tensions escalated in the following months with the Houthis launching a major missile attack on Israel that hit its main international airport on Sunday.

Israel retaliated by hitting a number of Houthi-controlled sites in Yemen, including the critical port at Hodeidah and a nearby cement factory. At least three people were killed and 35 others injured in the Israeli strikes, according to the Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV.

The Houthis called the missile strike on Ben Gurion Airport a “warning” to international airlines that the Israeli airport is “unsafe for civilian aviation.”