Thousands of U.S. marines arrive in Middle East as Yemen’s Houthis join war against Israel

(CBC News) - A U.S. Navy ship carrying some 2,500 marines has now arrived in the Middle East, U.S. Central Command announced Saturday, while Houthi rebels in Yemen launched strikes on Israel.

The USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship, was conducting exercises in the area around Taiwan when the order came to deploy to the Middle East after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran.

Before the arrival of the marines, the U.S. military had already built up the largest American force in the region in more than 20 years, including two aircraft carriers, several other warships and some 50,000 troops.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday the United States can meet its objectives "without any ground troops." But he also said Trump "has to be prepared for multiple contingencies" and that American forces are available "to give the president maximum optionality and maximum opportunity to adjust to contingencies should they emerge."

The U.S. and Israel say they attacked Iran in February to force regime change and to stop the country from developing nuclear weapons.

Iran has since launched retaliatory strikes on Israel and neighbouring Gulf countries with U.S. bases, and has also effectively blockaded the strategic Strait of Hormuz — through which about 20 per cent of global oil travels — as an economic pressure tactic.

Additionally, Iran-backed militias in Lebanon and Iraq have also joined in attacking Israel.

On Friday night and into Saturday morning, another proxy group, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, announced that it has joined the fray and launched strikes on Israeli.

The attack came hours after Saree signalled in a vague statement on Friday that the rebels would join the war that has shocked the region and rattled the global economy.

Israel said it intercepted the missiles, but the attacks raises concerns the rebel group backed by Tehran will again target commercial shipping travelling through the Red Sea corridor.

The Houthis have held Yemen's capital, Sanaa, since 2014, and so far had stayed out of the war. The rebels have had an uneasy ceasefire for years with Saudi Arabia, which launched a war against the group on behalf of Yemen's exiled government in 2015.

During the Israel-Hamas war, the Houthis disrupted naval traffic in the Red Sea with missiles and drones, prompting the U.S. to launch strikes against them that lasted for weeks.

The UN's International Organization for Migration said Friday that 82,000 civilian buildings in Iran — including hospitals and the homes of 180,000 people — have been damaged from U.S.-Israeli strikes since the start of the conflict.

"If this war continues, we risk a far wider humanitarian disaster," Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a statement. "Millions could be forced to flee across borders, placing immense pressure on an already overstretched region."

Local authorities say more than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran; 1,100 have been killed in Lebanon and 80 in Iraq; 19 people have been killed in Israel, while four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon; at least 13 U.S. troops have been killed throughout the region; and and four people in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and 20 in Gulf Arab states have also been killed.