Israeli airstrikes hit Yemen’s capital, port city after Houthi attack targets Israel

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A series of intense Israeli airstrikes shook Yemen’s terrorist-held capital and a port city early Thursday and killed at least nine people, officials said, shortly after a Houthi missile targeted central Israel.

Thursday’s strikes risk further escalating conflict with the Iranian-backed Houthis, whose attacks on the Red Sea corridor have drastically impacted global shipping. The group has so far avoided the same level of intense military strikes that have targeted Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, fellow members of Tehran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance.”

Israel’s military said that it conducted two waves of strikes in a preplanned operation that began early Thursday and involved 14 fighter jets. The military said the first wave of strikes targeted Houthi infrastructure at the ports of Hodeida, Salif and the Ras Isa oil terminal on the Red Sea.

Then, in a second wave of strikes, the military said its fighter jets targeted Houthi energy infrastructure in Sanaa.

“After Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement released Thursday. “They are learning and they will learn the hard way, that whoever harms Israel pays a very heavy price for it.”

An Israeli military statement offered no damage assessment.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said the strikes hit energy and port infrastructure, which he alleged the rebels “have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military action.”

The strikes happened just after Israel’s military said that its air force intercepted a missile launched from Yemen before it entered the country’s territory. The waves of strikes on Yemen early Thursday weren’t a direct response to the missile hit, said a military official, but rather a planned response to months of Houthi aggression. Israel’s fighter jets were already in the air when the missile was launched.

“Rocket and missile sirens were sounded following the possibility of falling debris from the interception,” the Israeli military said. Sirens sounded near Tel Aviv and the surrounding areas.

Following an investigation, the military said that the missile’s warhead fell on a school building in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The warhead exploded, collapsing the building, the military said.

The military official said that the Houthis have fired more than 200 missiles and UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, at Israel since Oct. 7, 2023.