Canada has added the Houthi militant group to its list of terrorist entities, the government announced Monday.
The Iran-backed group, officially known as Ansarallah, has operated in Yemen since the early 2000s and has contributed to unrest in the Middle East by attacking multiple commercial and naval vessels in the Red Sea for over a year.
Those attacks began in November 2023 to protest Israel’s military offensive in Gaza following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.
Canada supported British and American strikes against Houthi targets earlier this year in response to the Red Sea attacks.
“Today’s addition of Ansarallah as a listed terrorist entity contributes to our efforts in fighting terrorism globally and aligning Canada with our allies,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in a statement.
“Acts of violent extremism and terrorism have no place in the world and we will continue to take action to curtail the spread of these activities internationally and to counter threats to Canada, its citizens and its interests around the world.”
Under Canadian law, the designation allows for criminal penalties against any person or group that knowingly deals with a listed entity. Anyone found to be members of a listed entity can be barred from entering Canada.
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The order acknowledges the term “Houthi” can also refer to an ethnic group in Yemen, and this designation only applies to Ansarallah militants.
The Conservatives called on the government to list the Houthis as a terrorist entity in October.
The Houthis have also worked closely with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, both of which are also listed terrorist entities in Canada.
The Houthis have more recently targeted Israel directly with missile attacks while stepping up their Red Sea strikes as the Middle East conflict widened to include Hezbollah and Iran. The group has vowed to continue its attacks until Israel withdraws its military forces from Gaza.
The U.S. listed Ansarallah as a terrorist group in January this year.
The Houthis control much of northern Yemen and have battled for control of the country with the internationally-recognized Yemeni government since 2014. The civil war is one of the deadliest in recent history, with over 150,000 people killed and another 227,000 dead from famine and other indirect causes, according to United Nations estimates.
—with files from the Canadian Press
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
