U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of a March attack on Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday.

Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other Cabinet-level officials.