WASHINGTON — In the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Donald Trump claimed Houthi rebels in Yemen have agreed to stop attacking merchant vessels and other ships following a weekslong, daily bombing campaign by the U.S. that the military says struck the small country in southern Arabia more than 1,000 times and killed hundreds since it began in March.

Trump also said the U.S. will halt its bombings in turn, but offered sparse details. Oman's foreign minister, who helped negotiate the apparent deal, said that the Houthis agreed to stop attacking U.S. vessels, and a senior Houthi official told western media outlets that all of its operations in the Red Sea and targeting Israel will not cease “until the end of the aggression on Gaza and blockade on its people.”

“We had some very good news last night," Trump said. “The Houthis have announced … or they’ve announced to us at least, that they don’t want to fight anymore. They just don’t want to fight. And we will stop the bombings. And they have capitulated, but more importantly, we will take their word. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that’s what the purpose of what we were doing. So that's just news we just found out about that.”

“I think that’s very positive,” the president added. “They were knocking out a lot of ships.”

Trump previously promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” until the Houthis stopped their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, a vital international trade corridor.

Oman's foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, said in a statement on social media that his country helped negotiate a “ceasefire agreement between the two sides. In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait,” the waterway between Yemen and the Horn of Africa that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Amen and the Indian Ocean. 

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official, told Bloomberg News the Houthis were open to stop attacking U.S. military ships in exchange for an end to U.S. bombings but that “we will definitely continue our operations in support to Gaza.”

Prior to Trump's comments, the Houthis said in a statement on Tuesday that it was fighting a “holy war in aid of the wronged Palestinian people in Gaza” against the “Israeli-American-British” enemy, according to the New York Times.

According to Central Command, the U.S. has been waging an “intense and sustained campaign” against the Houthis. In a statement over the weekend, the command said the U.S. has struck more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since Operation Rough Rider began. It hasn't provided details on the targets or how the data is compiled. Houthi officials have said women and children have been among the hundreds killed by the campaign. 

The announcement of the apparent cessation in violence, which came during an unrelated meeting with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, was revealed after Israel claimed its airstrikes fully disabled the international airport in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa. Those strikes came after a missile launched by the Houthis struck an access road by Israel’s main airport over the weekend, temporarily halting flights and commuter traffic.

The U.S. government has been bombing Yemen on and off since the early years of the Obama administration. Trump ordered an intensified campaign of bombing the Houthis, who control much of the country, including Sanaa, shortly after returning to office. 

The bombings in recent years, under the Biden and Trump administrations, have been in retaliation for Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that the rebel group says were in response to Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians since October 2023.

The Houthis also recieve backing from Iran, who has long been locked in a violent and volatile conflict in the Middle East and and western Asia with the U.S. and Israel and their allies in the region, including exchanging strikes with Israel last year.

Trump has threatened to bomb Iran as he's returned to the White House, and U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agents have warned of assassination plots by Iran and its allies targeting the president and former and current administration officials.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the strikes on Yemen were addressing a “freedom of navigation issue” and that the Houthis were threatening global shipping.

“The job was to get that to stop, and if it’s going to stop, we can stop,” Rubio said after being prompted by Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

Trump is headed to the region next week, with stops in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar and previewed “a very big announcement” that will be “very positive.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.