(Hodeida) Israeli airstrikes on the strategic port of Hodeida in Yemen have killed three people, Houthi rebels said on Sunday, two days after a deadly drone attack in Tel Aviv by the insurgents.
Israeli warplanes bombed the Houthi-held port of Hodeida on Saturday, causing a massive fire.
The rebel-run Saba news agency, which quotes its health ministry, gave a toll on Sunday of “three martyrs and 87 wounded.”
The airstrikes came a day after a Houthi drone attack killed one person in Tel Aviv after evading Israel’s defense system.
According to experts, these are the first strikes announced by Israel against Yemen, a poor country on the Arabian Peninsula afflicted by a war between the Houthis and the government, located about 1,800 kilometers from Israel.
Backed by Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy, the Houthis have been targeting ships presented as linked to Israel off the coast of Yemen for months and have fired missiles against Israeli cities, the vast majority of which have been intercepted.
PHOTO ASSOCIATED PRESS
The strikes caused a massive fire that ravaged the port.
The offensives began a month after the start of the war in Gaza, which was triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7.
“Anyone who attacks us will pay a very heavy price,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address.
The Israeli army said its “warplanes struck military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the Hodeida port area, in response to hundreds of attacks carried out against Israel” by these rebels.
This port, essential in particular for humanitarian aid, serves as “the main supply route for the transport of Iranian weapons from Iran to Yemen, starting with the drone used in the attack” on Tel Aviv, accused Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari.
PHOTO ABIR SULTAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
“The Zionist entity will pay the price for its strikes against civilian facilities, and we will respond to escalation with escalation,” warned Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, a member of the political bureau of the Houthis who control large areas of Yemen including Hodeida (west).
Most of the injured suffered “serious burns,” according to the Houthi health ministry.
Fire and flames
According to a senior Houthi official, Mohammed Abdelsalam, the attack targeted “fuel storage facilities and a power plant” which supplies electricity to Hodeida, “to put pressure on Yemen to stop supporting” the Palestinians.
“We will respond to this aggression […] “We will not hesitate to strike vital targets of the Israeli enemy,” threatened Yahya Saree, military spokesman for the insurgents.
The Houthi television channel Al-Massirah broadcast images of Yemenis it said were injured in the strikes and receiving treatment in hospitals. A man interviewed by the channel said many of the injured were port workers.
PHOTO RICARDO MORAES, REUTERS
A building was targeted by a Houthi drone in Tel Aviv on Friday.
“The city is in darkness, people are on the streets and queues have formed at gas stations that have closed,” said one resident.
Yemen’s oil minister, however, said fuel reserves were “large and sufficient,” according to Saba news agency.
“Dangerous” turning point
“We fully recognize Israel’s right to self-defense,” a spokesman for the US National Security Council said, stressing that the United States, an ally of Israel, “was not involved in the strikes” on Hodeida.
The US military command for the Middle East (Centcom) announced on Saturday that it had “destroyed” a Houthi drone in the last 24 hours over the Red Sea.
Saudi Arabia, which has supported the Yemeni government against the rebels since 2015 but has been trying to end the conflict since 2023, also assured Sunday that it had “no connection” with this assault, adding that the “kingdom will not allow its airspace to be infiltrated by any party whatsoever”.
The war in Yemen, which began in 2014, has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Mohammed Albasha, a Middle East analyst at the US-based Navanti Group, said: “Traders now fear that (the strikes) will worsen the already critical food security and humanitarian situation, as the majority of trade passes through the port of Hodeidah.”
For Lebanese Hezbollah, which also opened a front against Israel after the start of the war in Gaza, the Israeli raids in Yemen mark a “dangerous turning point in the confrontation.”