• Photo taken from a video, released by the Ansar Allah Press Office via the Al Masirah TV channel, showing an injured child in a hospital in Saada, Yemen, on March 15, 2025, following airstrikes in the country. (Al Masirah TV via AP)

Prime Minister Keir Starmer quietly involved Britain's armed forces in President Donald Trump's airstrikes on Yemen last weekend, Declassified UK confirmed.

A Royal Air Force (RAF) Voyager aerial refueling tanker carried out two flights from Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus to support the USS Harry S. Truman, as per the report. This US aircraft carrier launched multiple air raids across Yemen on Saturday and Sunday, marking Trump's largest military operation since returning to office.

On his Truth Social platform, Trump warned Yemen’s Ansar Allah group: “HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!”

This marks Starmer’s first involvement in such operations since Labour assumed power, though the RAF did not announce its participation. Publicly available flight tracking data reveals that on Saturday, March 15, an RAF Voyager took off from Akrotiri at 17:49 UTC, heading south into the Red Sea. It reached the area just south of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, where US naval vessels were stationed, around 19:20. The Voyager KC2, with its fuel capacity of more than 100 tons, remained in the area for over two hours, assisting the USS Harry S. Truman.

The first strikes in Yemen were recorded around 17:15 UTC and lasted for more than five hours. A defense source said, as quoted by Declassified, that “the UK provided routine allied air-to-air refueling support to aid the self-defense of a US aircraft carrier in the region from which the strikes were launched.”

At least 27 civilians were reported killed and 22 injured during the initial night of US airstrikes across seven of Yemen’s governorates.

US and UK strikes burned Yemeni children

Footage aired by Yemen's Al-Masirah TV showed severely burnt children receiving medical care, with reports indicating strikes in the Saada governorate. The strikes also allegedly targeted the building of Ansar Allah’s Supreme Political Council in Sanaa.

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz later claimed that the strikes killed “multiple [Ansar Allah] leaders.”

The Voyager repeated its flight on March 16, with the US conducting a second round of strikes on Sunday, targeting the bridge of the Galaxy Leader merchant vessel, captured by Ansar Allah in November 2023, and the northern governorate of al-Jawf.

Trump declared war on Yemen for Israel.

Bombing Yemeni children and starving Palestinian children are war crimes.

These are a part of Trump's foreign policy record now.

History will remember him as a War Criminal. pic.twitter.com/oTwQRHtsX5

— Khalissee (@Kahlissee) March 16, 2025

By Monday, Sanaa reported a death toll of 53, including five children and two women.

This comes weeks after protests outside the RAF's Akrotiri base, where demonstrators objected to Britain’s use of Cyprus as a launch pad for military operations in the Middle East.

All of Yemen unites behind Ansar Allah amid US-UK aggression

A Yemeni resident in the south of the country told Declassified that sentiment has shifted since "Israel's" war on Gaza. “Britain supporting America in these efforts is not surprising,” he said. “But, with or without the UK helping them, the US, they cannot get rid of Ansar Allah by force.” He added that “the support Ansar Allah will gain from resisting the US and the UK will become more widespread the longer the airstrikes go on and increase with every civilian that is killed.”

The US airstrikes represent a significant escalation, marking the heaviest bombing in Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign ended in March 2022. These bombings are part of the ongoing joint air war launched under Operation Poseidon Archer by the Biden administration, with support from the UK under then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Since January last year, the US and UK have carried out over 300 strikes, killing 21 civilians and injuring 64.

The UK has not officially acknowledged bombing Yemen since May 2024, the deadliest month of bombing under the previous US and UK governments. In May, 16 civilians were reportedly killed, and 35 injured, though it's unclear whether British or American jets were responsible for these casualties.

The Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) began attacking “all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality,” in November 2023, in response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Despite the US-UK bombing campaign, Ansar Allah has conducted nearly 100 attacks on merchant vessels, including sinking the Rubymar in March 2024 and setting two vessels ablaze. The group also carried out missile and drone attacks on "Israel" in support of Gaza followed by brutal Israeli airstrikes on Yemen since July 2024.

The last recorded Ansar Allah attack on international shipping occurred on November 18, targeting an Israeli bulk carrier.

The ceasefire in Gaza in January led to an informal ceasefire in Yemen, with no reported YAF attacks or US-UK strikes since January 18. However, Ansar Allah leader Abdul Malek al-Houthi warned that attacks would resume if "Israel" breached the ceasefire.

The recent Israeli blockade on Gaza, preventing humanitarian aid from entering, led to an ultimatum from Ansar Allah. On March 7, the group gave "Israel" four days to lift the Gaza siege. After the deadline expired on March 11, Ansar Allah announced the resumption of their ban on Israeli-linked vessels traveling through the Red Sea, a ban that would last until "Israel" allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

While US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, claimed the strikes aimed to stop Ansar Allah from attacking global shipping, no merchant vessels had been targeted by the group for four months.

The Ansar Allah Political Bureau accused the US of conducting strikes on "Israel's" behalf, and on Sunday, YAF responded by launching more than a dozen ballistic missiles and drones at the USS Harry S. Truman. The US claimed that all projectiles were intercepted.

Ansar Allah spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam posted on X: “The US air raids represent a return to the militarization of the Red Sea, which is the real threat to international navigation in the region.”

Read next: What the West needs to know about Yemen's Ansar Allah