The US carried out another strike against the Houthi militia in Yemen, US Central Command said on Friday night, bombing a radar facility as part of an effort to further degrade the Iran-backed group’s ability to attack ships transiting the Red Sea.

It was the second straight day that the US military fired on a Houthi target, after a US-led barrage of military strikes early on Friday local time that was aimed at securing critical shipping routes between Europe and Asia. The strikes come amid fears of a wider escalation of the conflict in West Asia.

The strike, carried out at 3.45am Saturday local time by the USS Carney using Tomahawk missiles, was “a follow-on action on a specific military target”, Central Command said in a statement posted on social media. A Pentagon official said on Friday night that the strike was meant to further the job begun by the widespread coordinated air and naval assault on a number of Houthi targets in Yemen the night before.

Houthi forces in Yemen vowed earlier on Friday to retaliate for the previous strikes, which involved missiles and warplanes launched by the US and Britain and came in response to intensifying attacks on commercial vessels and warships in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi militia, which has said it was acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, director of the US military’s Joint Staff, told reporters on a conference call before the new strike that the Pentagon was more than ready for a response from the Houthis.

“I would expect that they will attempt some sort of retaliation,” said Sims, adding that doing so would be a mistake. “We simply are not going to be messed with here.”

A military spokesperson for the Houthis, Yahya Saree, said in a social media post on Friday that the US-led strikes would “not go unanswered and unpunished”. He said the earlier strikes had killed at least five members of the Houthi forces, an armed group that controls northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa.

The response on Friday from the Houthis, however, was a single anti-ship missile lobbed harmlessly into the Red Sea, far from any passing vessel, Sims said.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday that the strikes, ordered by President Joe Biden, had not been intended to ignite a wider regional war. “We’re not interested in a war with Yemen — we’re not interested in a conflict of any kind,” he said.