DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. long-range B-2 stealth bombers launched airstrikes early Thursday morning targeting underground bunkers used by Yemen's Houthi rebels, officials said.
It wasn't immediately clear what damage was done in the strikes.
However, there are no previous reports of the B-2 Spirit being used in the strikes targeting the Houthis, who have been attacking ships for months in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis' al-Masirah satellite news channel reported airstrikes around Yemen's capital, Sanaa, which the group has held since 2014. They also reported strikes around the Houthi stronghold of Saada. They offered no immediate information on damage or casualties.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the B-2 bombers targeted “five hardened underground weapons storage locations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”
The strike also appeared to be an indirect warning to Iran, the Houthis' main benefactor, which has targeted Israel with ballistic missile attacks twice over the past year. The B-2 would be used in any American attack on hardened Iranian nuclear facilities like Natanz or Fordo given it is the only aircraft in service that can drop the GBU-57, known as the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator.”
“This was a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified,” Austin said.
Austin and the U.S. military's Central Command offered no immediate assessment on the damage done. However, Central Command said in a statement that initial assessments suggested no civilians had been killed.
The Red Sea has become a battlefield for shippers since the Houthis began their campaign targeting ships traveling through the waterway, which once saw $1 trillion of cargo pass through it yearly.
Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October 2023. They have seized one vessel and sunk two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels.
The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the United Kingdom to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.
The Houthis also continue to launch missiles targeting Israel and have shot down a number of U.S. military MQ-9 Reaper drones. The rebels have threatened new attacks in response to Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon and its killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The description and locations named by the Houthis on Thursday correspond to known underground bases operated by the rebels, who have been locked into a stalemated war with a Saudi-led coalition since 2015 that’s decimated the Arab world’s poorest nation.
The Houthis have refurbished tunnels that once held Scud missiles for Yemen when it was ruled by strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh during his 33-year reign, according to an analysis in April by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Those sites include the al-Hafa and Jabal Attan military bases, the former Presidential House and the Yemen state television compound in Sanaa, analyst Fabian Hinz wrote.
The Houthis have built what appears to be their own large-scale tunnel network near Saada as well, Hinz added.
“The fact that the Houthis began constructing major new installations after the agreement of the cease-fire with the Saudi-led coalition suggests that the group is focused on entrenching themselves and bolstering their military capabilities,” he wrote. Iran similarly relies on a network of underground missile bases.
The nuclear-capable B-2, which first saw action in 1999 in the Kosovo War, is rarely used by the U.S. military in combat as each aircraft is worth some $1 billion. It has dropped bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as well. The aircraft are based at Whiteman Air Base in Missouri and typically conduct long-range strikes from there, though some B-2s were in Australia in September.
In this photo released by U.S. Air National Guard, a U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber takes off from a Royal Australian Air Force base in Amberley, Australia, Sept. 11, 2024. U.S. long-range B-2 stealth bombers launched airstrikes early Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, targeting underground bunkers used by Yemen's Houthi rebels, officials said. (Staff Sgt. Whitney Erhart/U.S. Air National Guard via AP)
ATLANTA (AP) — For Georgians unhappy about rising property tax bills, lawmakers say they have a solution — a limit on how much of a home's increasing value can be taxed.
With early balloting underway, voters are deciding on a state constitutional amendment that would limit increases in a home’s value for property tax purposes to the broader rate of inflation each year.
Supporters say it will protect current homeowners from ever-higher property tax bills, but opponents warn that the caps will unfairly shift the burden onto new homeowners, renters and other property holders.
Georgia is one of eight states where voters will decide property tax measures Nov 5, a sign of how rising tax bills are influencing politics nationwide.
Most significant is North Dakota, where a referendum seeks to end the current property tax for all purposes except repaying existing debt. Many officials there, including traditionally low-tax Republicans, are fighting the measure, saying such a big change could disrupt essential state and local government services.
Questions are also on the ballot in Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico and Wyoming.
With demand outweighing supply, housing prices are rising nationwide, and those increased values can show up in higher taxes.
From 2018 to 2022, the total assessed value of property across Georgia rose by nearly 39%, according to figures from the Georgia Department of Revenue. Most governments pocketed increased revenues without raising tax rates, boosting employee pay and other spending. Statewide property tax collections rose 41% from 2018 to 2022.
Lawmakers got an earful from constituents and responded with the proposed constitutional amendment. State Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Hufstetler, a Rome Republican who helped write it, calls increases based on higher valuations “a backdoor tax increase.”
“I think that some of our homeowners, particularly the elderly, are getting taxed out of their homes,” Hufstetler said. “They don’t even have an income anymore, but yet their taxes are going sky high.”
The protection would last as long as someone owns their home. The assessed value would reset to the market value when a home is sold.
Dozens of Georgia counties, cities and school systems already operate under similar local assessment caps.
There’s little opposition, and early voters interviewed this week were universally favorable. Brad Turney, who owns a condo in Atlanta's Midtown neighborhood, was among supporters.
“I don't want it to get out of hand, and I think this might be helpful,” Turney said after voting in suburban Sandy Springs.
But school systems have been wary, warning that the cap could starve them of needed funds. That’s especially true because most school districts can’t raise property tax rates above a certain level.
To ease schools' concerns, the measure gives local governments and school districts until March 1 to opt out. Any that do not would be permanently governed by the cap.
“You only have one time to opt out, and then you're done,” said John Zauner, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association. He expects many systems could exit.
Hufstetler said it would be a “mistake” to opt out.
Assessment caps lead to disparities, with people paying higher taxes than their neighbors just because they bought a house later. Audrey Yushkov, a senior policy analyst with the Tax Foundation, warned that the measure could make purchasing a home more difficult in the future, because new buyers would face higher bills and longtime owners would have an incentive to stay in their current houses to keep their tax bills low. The Tax Foundation is a Washington, D.C.-based group that is traditionally skeptical of tax hikes.
“There is this lock-in effect for current homeowners and a lock-out effect for new homebuyers,” Yushkov said.
Those effects are rampant in California, which pioneered an even stricter assessment cap, Proposition 13, in 1978.
Yushkov also noted that higher tax bills would be passed on to renters because the amendment doesn't shield apartments and other commercial property from higher assessments.
The measure also includes a provision letting city and county governments increase sales taxes by a penny on every $1 of sales to replace property taxes. Hufstetler lauded that provision, saying it would allow governments to tax visitors to pay for local services. But Yushkov called it a loser, saying property taxes are more transparent because people get one big yearly bill and because the services are clearly linked to the taxes.
People line up around the building at the Tucker-Reid H. Cofer branch of the Dekalb County Public Library on the first day of early voting, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024 in Tucker, Ga. (Matthew Pearson/WABE via AP)
FILE - A sign announcing a home for sale is posted outside a home Feb. 1, 2024, in Kennesaw, Ga., near Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
