After inventing drone warfare and launching at least 300 drone strikes in Yemen over the past 15 years, the U.S. is condemning a drone strike by the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group. State Department spokesperson Robert Palladino on Friday denounced Thursday’s deadly blast, aimed at an on-base military parade and killing at least six people, as a contravention of “the spirit of the Hudaydah ceasefire and the progress made last month at the UN-led talks in Sweden.” The U.S. has conducted between 318 and 338 drone strikes in Yemen since November 2002, most recently on Jan. 1 in an attack aimed at one of the alleged planners of the U.S.S. Cole bombing in 2000. Additionally, both the Obama and Trump administrations have provided bombs and intelligence useful for targeting to the Saudi-led coalition conducting an intense aerial assault in Yemen, contributing to one of the world’s most severe humanitarian disasters.
—Spencer Ackerman
