LONDON -- The United States and Britain expressed hope Sunday that a cease-fire can begin in Yemen in the coming days, as a flurry of diplomatic negotiations focused on the impoverished, war-torn country.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said mediation is ongoing involving Yemen's exiled, internationally recognized government and the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, who control much of the country.

Negotiators "are calling today for the implementation of a cease-fire to be implemented by the parties as rapidly as possible, meaning Monday, Tuesday, but moving very rapidly," Kerry said Sunday. "This is the time to implement a cease-fire unconditionally, and then move to the negotiating table."

Key players of both parties -- Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the rebels' lead negotiator and the Saudi Arabian foreign minister -- were said to have agreed to the arrangement.

The United States backs Hadi's government, as well as a Saudi-led coalition that has battled the rebels since last year.

After the meeting in London, Kerry, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the United Nations' special envoy to Yemen, called for an immediate cease-fire to begin in the coming days. Britain has been under pressure to find a solution to the conflict because it's a key supplier of weapons to Saudi Arabia. In the last nine months of 2015, Saudi Arabia accounted for 40 percent of Britain's military sales.

"The world has had enough of the conflict now in Yemen," Johnson said. "The road map offers a genuine way forward for both sides if they will take that opportunity."

The war has been largely overshadowed by the conflict against the Islamic State militant group elsewhere in the Middle East, though rights groups have increasingly criticized the Saudi-led coalition's airstrikes in recent months, as well as the United States as the coalition's primary weapons supplier. One of those airstrikes -- the bombing of a funeral hall in the capital, Sanaa, on Oct. 8 -- killed at least 140 people.

The U.S. has also in the past week fired Tomahawk missiles after the targeting of a naval warship by Houthi rebels.

In the latest U.S. Navy report, a group of American warships in the Red Sea on Saturday night "had indications of a possible inbound missile threat and deployed appropriate defensive measures," said Capt. Paula Dunn, a spokesman for U.S. Navy Forces Central Command. She said in a statement that all ships and sailors were safe, without elaborating.

An American defense official said Sunday that one of the ships picked up on radar what sailors believed to be missiles being fired out of Yemen at night. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the possible threat that were not yet made public.

The Houthis and their allies did not immediately comment.

The Red Sea and the nearby Bab el-Mandeb strait, a crucial choke point for international shipping and crude oil, has been the scene of what the U.S. describes as at least two missile attacks from rebel-held territory in Yemen. The Tomahawk missiles -- the first shots fired by the U.S. in anger in the conflict -- destroyed mobile radar positions.

The Houthi-controlled Saba News Agency has run dispatches denying that rebels fired on American warships.

Yemen has been at war since September 2014, when the Houthis swept into Sanaa. The Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Arab nations launched a campaign against the Houthis in March 2015.

The U.N. and rights groups estimate the conflict has killed at least 9,000 people and displaced nearly 3 million more.

Information for this article was contributed by Bradley Klapper and Jon Gambrell of The Associated Press and by John Ainger of Bloomberg News.</s>Attacks on U.S. warships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the American Tomahawk counterstrike have cast the spotlight on Yemen, which is engulfed in a bewilderingly complex war that is drawing in the United States.

Here are the stakes in Yemen and why the conflict there is important to U.S. interests in the Middle East and the global struggle against Islamist terrorism.

Question: Who’s shooting at us and why?

Answer: The missiles that targeted the destroyer USS Mason were fired from territory controlled by rebels known as the Houthis (WHO-thees), Iranian-backed Shiite tribesmen from northern Yemen. The Houthis, whose name comes from their founder Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, seized the capital of Sanaa in September 2014 and overthrew the U.S. and Saudi-backed government. In response, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, backed by the United States, launched an air and ground campaign against the Houthis in March 2015. Because the U.S. supports the Saudis, the Houthis consider Americans a party to that conflict, which has killed about 10,000 people, including many civilians.

Q: Who are the Houthis?

A: The Houthis, who call themselves Ansar Allah or “Supporters of God,” became active in the 1990s to demand social and political reform. In 2004 the Houthis launched an armed insurgency that gained momentum seven years later during the Arab Spring uprising against longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia feared the growing instability in Yemen would open the door to Islamist extremism. Under pressure from Saudi Arabia and the U.S., Saleh stepped down in favor of his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. However, Hadi was unable to consolidate power and in September 2014, the Houthis swept into Sanaa, forcing his government to resign. The Saudis saw the Houthis as Iranian agents threatening their southern border at a time when Iraq on the northern frontier was falling deeper into Iran’s orbit.

Q: Why is Yemen so unstable?

A: Yemen, the homeland of Osama bin Laden’s family, is the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula and has been wracked by political turmoil for most of the last 50 years. During the Cold War, the country broke in two, with South Yemen becoming a Soviet client state and the North struggling for international support. In 1990, as the Cold War was fading, the two countries reunited, a move that failed to bring lasting stability due to political, tribal and religious rivalry that opened the door to Islamist extremism.

Q: Why does the U.S. care what happens in Yemen?

A: Part of the reason is location. Yemen sits along the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula along the Red Sea, a strategic route to the Persian Gulf. U.S. warships traveling to and from the Gulf transit the Red Sea, whose southern entrance is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait -- only 25 miles wide at its narrowest point. The other part is Yemen’s role in the fight against global terrorism. In January 2009, the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al-Qaida merged to form al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. U.S. intelligence at the time identified AQAP as the terror movement’s most dangerous branch. Among other things, the Yemen al-Qaida branch was responsible for the failed attempt by the “underwear bomber” to blow up a U.S. airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki used Yemen as a base where he broadcast online sermons recruiting young Muslims in the west. Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. missile strike in September 2011 but U.S. intelligence believes his online sermons remain a valuable recruiting tool. The Houthis say they oppose al-Qaida but are considered a threat to U.S. and Saudi interests because of their ties to Iran.

Q: In addition to the al-Qaida threat, has Yemen morphed into a U.S.-Iranian proxy war?

A: The Houthis have long denied they are Iranian proxies although Saudi Arabia and the U.S. believe they are. Media reports say Iranian flights to Sanaa have increased since the city fell to the Houthis. Their slogan “Death to America, death to Israel, damnation to the Jews and victory for Islam” lines them up in an anti-Western camp that includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq.</s>Multiple surface-to-surface missiles were fired at the USS Mason sailing in international waters in the Red Sea but the warship used on-board countermeasures to defend itself and was not hit, one defense official said, citing initial information.

The latest attack could provoke further retaliation by the U.S. military, which launched cruise missiles on Thursday against three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen in response to the two previous failed missile firings against the Mason.

"The Mason once again appears to have come under attack in the Red Sea, again from coastal defense cruise missiles fired from the coast of Yemen," Admiral John Richardson, U.S. chief of naval operations, said during a ship christening in Baltimore on Saturday.

Another U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters: “We are assessing the situation. All of our ships and crews are safe and unharmed.”

Thursday’s U.S. counter-strikes, authorized by President Barack Obama, marked Washington's first direct military action against suspected Houthi-controlled targets in Yemen's conflict and raised questions about the potential for further escalation.

The Houthi movement earlier this week denied responsibility for the missile attacks on the Mason and warned that it too would defend itself.

The Pentagon on Thursday stressed the limited nature of the strikes, aimed at radar that it suspected enabled the launch of at least three missiles against the Mason on Sunday and Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said at the time that the U.S. counter-strikes were not connected to the broader civil war in Yemen, which has unleashed famine and killed more than 10,000 people since March 2015 in the Arab world's poorest country.

The United States, a longtime ally of Saudi Arabia, has provided aerial refueling of warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition striking Yemen and it supplies U.S. weapons to the kingdom.

Iran, which supports the Houthi group, said last week it had deployed two warships to the Gulf of Aden, to protect ship lanes from piracy.</s>The USS Mason conducts maneuvers as part of an exercise in the Gulf of Oman on Sept. 10, 2016. For the second time this week two missiles were fired at the USS Mason in the Red Sea, and officials believe they were launched by the same Yemen-based Houthi rebels involved in the earlier attack, a U.S. military official said Wednesday.

Blake Midnight / U.S. Navy via AP</s>Attacks on U.S. warships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the American Tomahawk counterstrike have cast the spotlight on Yemen, which is engulfed in a bewilderingly complex war that is drawing in the United States.

Here are the stakes in Yemen and why the conflict there is important to U.S. interests in the Middle East and the global struggle against Islamist terrorism.

Question: Who’s shooting at us and why?

Answer: The missiles that targeted the destroyer USS Mason were fired from territory controlled by rebels known as the Houthis (WHO-thees), Iranian-backed Shiite tribesmen from northern Yemen. The Houthis, whose name comes from their founder Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, seized the capital of Sanaa in September 2014 and overthrew the U.S. and Saudi-backed government. In response, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, backed by the United States, launched an air and ground campaign against the Houthis in March 2015. Because the U.S. supports the Saudis, the Houthis consider Americans a party to that conflict, which has killed about 10,000 people, including many civilians.

Q: Who are the Houthis?

A: The Houthis, who call themselves Ansar Allah or “Supporters of God,” became active in the 1990s to demand social and political reform. In 2004 the Houthis launched an armed insurgency that gained momentum seven years later during the Arab Spring uprising against longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia feared the growing instability in Yemen would open the door to Islamist extremism. Under pressure from Saudi Arabia and the U.S., Saleh stepped down in favor of his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. However, Hadi was unable to consolidate power and in September 2014, the Houthis swept into Sanaa, forcing his government to resign. The Saudis saw the Houthis as Iranian agents threatening their southern border at a time when Iraq on the northern frontier was falling deeper into Iran’s orbit.

Q: Why is Yemen so unstable?

A: Yemen, the homeland of Osama bin Laden’s family, is the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula and has been wracked by political turmoil for most of the last 50 years. During the Cold War, the country broke in two, with South Yemen becoming a Soviet client state and the North struggling for international support. In 1990, as the Cold War was fading, the two countries reunited, a move that failed to bring lasting stability due to political, tribal and religious rivalry that opened the door to Islamist extremism.

Q: Why does the U.S. care what happens in Yemen?

A: Part of the reason is location. Yemen sits along the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula along the Red Sea, a strategic route to the Persian Gulf. U.S. warships traveling to and from the Gulf transit the Red Sea, whose southern entrance is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait -- only 25 miles wide at its narrowest point. The other part is Yemen’s role in the fight against global terrorism. In January 2009, the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al-Qaida merged to form al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. U.S. intelligence at the time identified AQAP as the terror movement’s most dangerous branch. Among other things, the Yemen al-Qaida branch was responsible for the failed attempt by the “underwear bomber” to blow up a U.S. airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki used Yemen as a base where he broadcast online sermons recruiting young Muslims in the west. Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. missile strike in September 2011 but U.S. intelligence believes his online sermons remain a valuable recruiting tool. The Houthis say they oppose al-Qaida but are considered a threat to U.S. and Saudi interests because of their ties to Iran.

Q: In addition to the al-Qaida threat, has Yemen morphed into a U.S.-Iranian proxy war?

A: The Houthis have long denied they are Iranian proxies although Saudi Arabia and the U.S. believe they are. Media reports say Iranian flights to Sanaa have increased since the city fell to the Houthis. Their slogan “Death to America, death to Israel, damnation to the Jews and victory for Islam” lines them up in an anti-Western camp that includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq.</s>Multiple surface-to-surface missiles were fired at the USS Mason sailing in international waters in the Red Sea but the warship used on-board countermeasures to defend itself and was not hit, one defense official said, citing initial information.

The latest attack could provoke further retaliation by the U.S. military, which launched cruise missiles on Thursday against three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen in response to the two previous failed missile firings against the Mason.

"The Mason once again appears to have come under attack in the Red Sea, again from coastal defense cruise missiles fired from the coast of Yemen," Admiral John Richardson, U.S. chief of naval operations, said during a ship christening in Baltimore on Saturday.

Another U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters: “We are assessing the situation. All of our ships and crews are safe and unharmed.”

Thursday’s U.S. counter-strikes, authorized by President Barack Obama, marked Washington's first direct military action against suspected Houthi-controlled targets in Yemen's conflict and raised questions about the potential for further escalation.

The Houthi movement earlier this week denied responsibility for the missile attacks on the Mason and warned that it too would defend itself.

The Pentagon on Thursday stressed the limited nature of the strikes, aimed at radar that it suspected enabled the launch of at least three missiles against the Mason on Sunday and Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said at the time that the U.S. counter-strikes were not connected to the broader civil war in Yemen, which has unleashed famine and killed more than 10,000 people since March 2015 in the Arab world's poorest country.

The United States, a longtime ally of Saudi Arabia, has provided aerial refueling of warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition striking Yemen and it supplies U.S. weapons to the kingdom.

Iran, which supports the Houthi group, said last week it had deployed two warships to the Gulf of Aden, to protect ship lanes from piracy.</s>In this March 12, 2011 file photo, US destroyer USS Mason sails in the Suez canal in Ismailia, Egypt (AP photo)

WASHINGTON — Multiple missiles were fired on Saturday at three US warships in the Red Sea, though none was hit and there were no casualties, the US military said, amid rising tensions with Yemen's Houthi rebels.

A US defence official said the altercation took place starting around 1930 GMT. It was unclear how many of the surface-to-surface missiles were fired at the USS Mason, USS Nitze and USS Ponce.

The USS Mason destroyer, which was sailing in international waters off Yemen's coast earlier this week, used unspecified countermeasures against the incoming missiles, the official said.

The attempted missile strikes were the most serious escalation yet of America's involvement in a deadly civil war that has killed more than 6,800 people, wounded more than 35,000 and displaced at least three million since a Saudi-led coalition launched military operations last year.

Officials have stressed that Washington wants to avoid getting embroiled in yet another war in an already volatile region where America is to varying degrees waging wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

On Thursday, the US Navy launched five Tomahawk cruise missiles at three mobile radar sites in Houthi-controlled territory on Yemen's Red Sea coast, after the Iran-backed rebels blasted rockets at the USS Mason twice in four days.

The military insists these moves are taken out of self-defence. The Houthis have denied conducting the attacks.

Though the United States is providing logistical support to a Saudi-led coalition battling the rebels, Thursday's launches marked the first time Washington has taken direct action against the Houthis.

But the US strikes earlier this week did not take out Houthi missiles and, though the radar destruction makes it harder to aim the weapons, officials have warned rebels could still use spotter boats or online ship-tracking websites to find new targets.

The rockets fired at the USS Mason on Sunday and again Wednesday were believed to be the first time since 1987 that a US warship has been targeted by an incoming missile.</s>Missiles may have been fired at US warships in Red Sea — official

Three US warships in the Red Sea detected what may have been missiles fired at them on Saturday but none hit, the US military said, amid rising tensions with Yemen’s Huthi rebels.

US officials initially said that surface-to-surface missiles had been fired at the USS Mason, USS Nitze and USS Ponce off the coast of Yemen starting around 1930 GMT, though it was unclear how many.

They later backtracked, saying that the ships detected what may have been missiles.

“A US Strike Group transiting international waters in the Red Sea detected possible inbound missile threats and deployed appropriate defensive measures,” a US defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“Post event assessment is ongoing. All US warships and vessels in the area are safe.”

The USS Mason destroyer, which was sailing in international waters off Yemen’s coast earlier this week, used unspecified countermeasures against the incoming missiles, a military official said.

If confirmed, the attempted missile strikes would be the most serious escalation yet of the US involvement in a deadly civil war that has killed more than 6,800 people, wounded more than 35,000 and displaced at least three million since a Saudi-led coalition launched military operations last year.

Officials have stressed that Washington wants to avoid getting embroiled in yet another war in an already volatile region.

On Thursday, the US Navy launched five Tomahawk cruise missiles at three mobile radar sites in Huthi-controlled territory on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, after the Iran-backed rebels blasted rockets at the USS Mason twice in four days.

The military insists these moves are taken out of self-defense. The Huthis have denied conducting the attacks.

Though the United States is providing logistical support to a Saudi-led coalition battling the rebels, Thursday’s launches marked the first time Washington has taken direct action against the Huthis.

But the US strikes earlier this week did not take out Huthi missiles and, though the radar destruction makes it harder to aim the weapons, officials have warned rebels could still use spotter boats or online ship-tracking websites to find new targets.</s>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The U.S. Navy on Sunday began investigating a possible overnight missile attack from Yemen on a group of American warships in the Red Sea amid uncertainty about what transpired.

The Red Sea and the nearby strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait, a crucial chokepoint for international shipping and crude oil, has been the scene of what the U.S. describes as at least two missile attacks from rebel-held territory in Yemen. American forces have fired back once with Tomahawk missiles, destroying mobile radar positions in the first shots fired by the U.S. in anger in the stalemated conflict.

In the latest incident, a group of American warships in the Red Sea on Saturday night "had indications of a possible inbound missile threat and deployed appropriate defensive measures," said Capt. Paula Dunn, a spokeswoman for U.S. Navy Forces Central Command. She said in a statement that all ships and sailors were safe, without elaborating.

An American defense official told The Associated Press on Sunday that one of the ships saw on radar what sailors believed to be missiles being fired on it out of Yemen at night. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the incident not yet made public.

Yemen's Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, and their allies did not immediately comment on the incident Saturday. Previously, the Houthi-controlled SABA news agency ran dispatches denying rebels ever fired on American warships.

Adm. John Richardson, the Navy's top officer, said earlier Saturday the destroyer USS Mason appeared "to have come under attack." The Mason, an Arleigh Burke class of guided missile destroyer whose home port is Norfolk, Virginia, has been targeted twice before by missile fire out of Yemen, according to the U.S. Navy.

Also known to be in the Red Sea near the Mason are the USS Nitze and the USS Ponce.

Previously, an Emirati-leased Swift boat came under rocket fire near the same area as the Mason and sustained serious damage. The United Arab Emirates described the vessel as carrying humanitarian aid and having a crew of civilians, while the Houthis called the boat a warship.

Yemen has been at war since September 2014, when the Houthis swept into the capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Arab nations launched a campaign against the Houthis in March 2015.

Yemen's war is largely overshadowed by the conflict against the Islamic State group elsewhere in the Middle East, though rights groups have mounted increased criticism of the Saudi-led airstrikes in recent months for killing civilians. The U.N. and rights groups estimate the conflict has killed at least 9,000 people and displaced nearly 3 million more.

The U.S. had been providing logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, but had begun to withdraw its support in recent weeks over the civilian casualties from its air campaign.</s>Breaking News US official: Missiles fired again at US ship near Yemen

WASHINGTON — A U.S. official says multiple missiles have been fired again from a Houthi-controlled region in Yemen targeting an American warship in the Red Sea.

The official says the ship, the USS Mason, launched counter-measures and was not hit.

This is the third time in about a week that the USS Mason and other US ships have been targeted by missiles from the coastal Yemen region. And it comes just days after a U.S. warship fired Tomahawk missiles into Yemen to destroy three radar sites that Pentagon leaders believed played a role in the earlier attacks against the ships.

The official says additional radars could have been used in this latest attack. The official is not authorized to discuss the incident publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.
The United States Navy's USS Mason is fired on for the third time in a week from territory controlled by Houthi forces in Yemen, while in international waters of the Red Sea. The ship deployed countermeasures and was not struck, according to U.S. officials.