The Israeli army said on Saturday that its “warplanes” struck “military targets” in western Yemen under the control of the Houthi rebels, who had claimed responsibility the day before for a drone attack that left one dead in Tel Aviv.
“Israeli army warplanes struck military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the Hodeida port area in Yemen, in response to hundreds of attacks carried out against the State of Israel” by these rebels in recent months, the army said in a statement.
Loud explosions were heard at the scene, according to an AFP correspondent.
The port attacked by the Israeli air force serves as “a main supply route for the delivery of Iranian weapons from Iran to Yemen, starting with the drone used in Friday morning’s attack” in Tel Aviv, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised address in the evening.
Even though the Houthi rebels also target “other countries”, the strikes carried out on Saturday were “an action by the Israeli army alone”, insisted Rear Admiral Hagari, while adding that Israel had “kept its friends informed”.
“The blood of Israeli citizens has a price,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement after the strikes. “This has been clearly demonstrated in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and other places — if they dare to attack us, the result will be the same.”
After the drone attack that hit central Tel Aviv on Friday, Mr. Gallant had threatened reprisals against Yemeni rebels, supported by Iran.
“As we have proven to this day, this time again the defense and security system [israélien] “will make anyone who tries to harm Israel or sends terrorists against it pay decisively and by surprise,” the defense minister wrote in a message on his X account.
After months of attacks on ships off Yemen, in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden, the Houthis, allied with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas at war with Israel in Gaza, have threatened to make Tel Aviv a “primary target” for future attacks.