The U.S. and British militaries have launched strikes against targets in Houthi-controlled Yemen, two U.S. officials said.

The strikes targeted multiple locations with fighter jets and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from Navy ships, the officials said.

Houthi rebels, who are backed by Iran, have been carrying out attacks in the Red Sea since mid-November after they declared support for Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

The U.S. has struck Houthi vessels in waters near Yemen and shot down attack drones, officials have said.

The U.K. has had military assets in the Red Sea, as well. Its defense secretary, Grant Shapps, said yesterday that one of those vessels, the destroyer HMS Diamond, destroyed multiple attack drones in the largest Houthi attack on sea to date.

Palestinian civilians who fled the Israeli invasion should be able to return to their homes in northern Gaza whether or not Hamas releases the remaining hostages, a State Department spokesman said.

Deputy spokesman Vedant Patel made that clear following reports that Israel was insisting that Hamas free all the people who were kidnapped on Oct. 7 before they allow displaced Palestinian civilians to return home.

"So I’m not going to speak to the specifics of internal diplomatic deliberations, but Palestinian civilians must be able to return to their homes when they choose to return, full stop," Patel said. "And we’ve been clear that all hostages must be released immediately, and that the issue of their release should not be linked to any other issues. We’ve been quite clear about that."

Patel also parried questions about whether the Palestinian Health Ministry was inflating the number of civilian deaths.

Dr. Noor Alwhidi works at Rafah’s Al-Kuwaiti Hospital in southern Gaza. NBC News followed her as she tended to patients and found time for a rare cup of coffee.

Using microphones and speakers, the families of hostages still being held captive in Gaza gathered at Israel's border with the enclave in the hope that their loved ones would hear their messages of support.

Video shared by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum showed dozens of relatives relaying their messages in Hebrew and English on the stretch of the border close to the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Many held posters of their family members.

“We are waiting for all the members of Kibbutz Nir Oz,” one relative said in the video. The woman, who was holding a poster with a photo of 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz, spoke in English but was not named by the forum. She added that 26 people from the kibbutz remained in captivity.

TEL AVIV — University students in Gaza praised South Africa tonight for its “courage” after the country brought allegations of genocide against Israel in the United Nations’ top court. 

“I felt proud about this country for their courage to lead the case,” Mohammad Nasser, a 24-year-old university student, told NBC News’ crew on the ground. Nasser said he was able to watch some of today’s proceedings online and was glad to see South Africa “defend … our case — and in front of the world.”

Mustafa Khaled, a 20-year-old studying business, said he felt the proceedings marked an important “humanitarian step in this moment” — and he said he was not surprised to see South Africa take the lead in filing the complaint. “A country like South Africa has previous experience in such aggressive and violent circumstances, so it’s not a surprising move,” he said, adding: “We really thank them and hope that this will make a difference in the situation."

“All the world must move for us to end this genocide,” he said. “Every moment there is a bombardment, martyrs and injured, so we wish it will end soon.”

In a briefing today, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel confirmed that the oil tanker seized by Iranians this morning was “a Marshall Islands-flagged and Greek-owned oil tanker.” He condemned the seizure and called on the Iranian government to “release the ship and its crew.”

The Nelson Mandela Foundation, which bears the name of the man who led the fight against racist apartheid, said it backs South Africa's bid to try Israel for genocide against the Palestinian people.

"The Nelson Mandela Foundation extends support to the South African legal team as they appear before the International Court of Justice today," the group posted on social media. "Wishing them strength and success in their pursuit of truth, justice and peace."

Mandela, who died in 2013, was a longtime supporter of the Palestinian bid for statehood.

The remains of Gaza City’s Omari Mosque, the oldest mosque in Gaza, on Jan. 5.

Much of the Gaza Strip has become unrecognizable, as entire neighborhoods that were once bustling with people, cars and donkey-drawn carts have been reduced to rubble.

Israel stands accused of committing genocide against the Palestinian people — a crime that did not have a name until 1944 when it was coined by a Polish-Jewish lawyer who had lost most of his family to the Nazi Holocaust.

Raphael Lemkin, who fled to the U.S. after the Germans in 1939 invaded Poland, combined the Greek word “genos,” which means race or tribe, with “cide,” which is Latin for killing, to create a word which means the intentional destruction of a people, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

It first appeared in Lemkin’s 1944 book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe,” in which he documented German attempts to exterminate Jews, Poles and others.

Later, as part of the U.S. team preparing for the Nuremberg trials, Lemkin was able to get the word included in the indictment against the Hitler’s accomplices.

Lemkin also successfully pushed the United Nations to made genocide an international crime. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the General Assembly in December 1948.