coverage of the breaking news out of the middle east and the u.s. strikes continues with ac 360. good evening. thanks for joining us. we begin tonight with breaking news. american-led air strikes in one of the most volatile hot spots in the world right now. mitts is some of the first video of explosions tonight in yemen s just north of the capital. iranian backed houthi fighters from yemen have been attacking commercial ships in the nearby red sea. there s been dozens of attacks. tonight u.s. and british forcevise struck back using air and naval assets. both surface ships and submarines with one houthi official moments ago saying multiple cities had been hit. cnn s oren leiberman at the pentagon for us tonight. m.j. lee at the white house where the president has just weighed in. i want to start at the pentagon. oren, what do we learn so far about the targets that have been hit? reporter: more than a dozen different targets were hit by u.s. aircraft and assets. it was also
monitoring a press call in place where we re getting just new information about some of the behind the scenes and what sort of led to what we are seeing right now on the screen. a senior administration confirming what cnn reported earlier this evening that u.s. vessels had been targeted by the houthis on tuesday. this is a series of attacks that we saw just two days ago. this included a u.s. commercial vessel as well as, according to the this official u.s. military vessels. and just to give you a sense of what exactly happened on tuesday, we are told by this official that had it not been for this defensive coalition that had been in place in the red sea, this is what we ve been referring to as opoperation prosperity guardian that ships would have been sunk and this commercial ship full of jet fuel would have been hit. and they described it as a close call. we re also told as some of this we reported on earlier after