US FORCES attacked Yemen with cruise missiles yesterday, adding to the Saudi blitz on the impoverished Middle Eastern nation in what the Pentagon claimed was “self-defence.”

Three Yemeni Republican Guard radar installations on the country’s Red Sea coast were hit with cruise missiles launched from the US destroyer USS Nitze.

US President Barack Obama ordered the attacks on the recommendation of Defence Secretary Ashton Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Joseph Dunford.

In Britain, Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said the US attack on Yemen was “another escalation of the war there.”

She warned: “Obama is risking a much wider war and the incident may be used as a pretext for this, as we saw in the 1960s with the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam.

“This is a very dangerous time in the Middle East, with growing tensions over Syria between the US and Russia.

“The end of a US presidency is often an uncertain and unstable period in this respect. Whoever becomes president, intervention in the region is likely to grow.”

The pretext for the military intervention was alleged missile attacks from Yemen on two other US warships, the destroyer USS Mason and the amphibious assault ship USS Ponce, on Monday and Wednesday, neither of which actually struck the vessels.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook claimed the attacks were “limited” and in “self-defence.”

He said they had been ordered “to protect our personnel, our ships and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean.

But, ominously, he warned that Washington would “respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic as appropriate.”

The missile strike came just days after the US pledged to “review” billions of dollars of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and logistical support to the nine-nation invasion coalition.

That announcement followed the coalition’s bombing of a funeral in the capital Sanaa, which left 155 people dead in a scene of horrific carnage and wounded more than 500.

The Saudi-led coalition is fighting to restore ousted president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power in a civil war against the Houthi movement and allied elements of the Yemeni armed forces.

Yemeni Republican Guard spokesman Sharaf Ioqman called the attack an “American farce to find a reason to interfere in Yemen directly after failure of the Saudis.”

Yemeni troops and Houthi militia have captured much of Saudi Arabia’s southern Jizan and Najran provinces, while two weeks ago the Republican Guard sank an Emirati warship in the Red Sea.

Mr Ioqman said that the army never targets ships outside Yemen’s territorial waters — only vessels that enter them come under attack.

An unnamed military officer told Yemen’s Saba news agency that the US claims were unfounded and that the popular committees — set up by the Houthi rebels — had nothing to do with such actions.

He added: “Such claims are part of the general context of creating false justifications to escalate assaults and cover up the continuous crimes committed by the aggression against the Yemeni people, along with the blockade imposed on it,
and after the increasing condemnations to such barbaric and hideous crimes against Yemenis.”

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths said: “This direct military intervention is obviously intended to clear the path for the murderous bombing campaign by Saudi Arabia to intensify.

“This violation of yet another country’s sovereignty by US forces highlights the utter hypocrisy of the sermons delivered by Obama and Kerry against Russia’s assistance to the Syrian government.

“Yesterday, the US was supposed to be reviewing arms sales to the vile Saudi dictatorship and now it’s helping them to murder yet more Yemeni civilians.”