Israel says its fighter jets have struck targets in Yemen after fatal drone attack

The Israeli army said Saturday it struck several Houthi targets in western Yemen, a day after a fatal drone attack by the rebel group in Tel Aviv.

The Israeli strikes appeared to be the first on Yemeni soil since the Israel-Hamas war began in October.

The Houthis, who claimed responsibility for the drone attack, have disrupted commercial shipping and launched drones and missiles toward Israel throughout the war. Until Friday, all were intercepted by either Israel or Western allies with forces stationed in the region.

On Saturday, a number of “military targets” were hit in the western port city of Hodeidah, a Houthi stronghold, Israel’s army said, adding the strikes were “in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the state of Israel in recent months.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hodeidah was used as an entry point for Houthi militia to receive Iranian weapons. Netanyahu said the strike, some 1,800 kilometres from Israel’s borders, was a reminder to enemies that there was no place that Israel could not reach. 

Hodeidah residents told Reuters by phone that explosions were heard throughout the city during an intensive bombardment, and Al-Masirah TV said civil defence forces and firefighters were trying to extinguish fires in the port’s oil tanks.

The Ministry of Health in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital city, said preliminary information indicates at least 80 people were wounded, most of them with severe burns, in the strikes in Hodeidah.

Israel’s military said it alone carried out the strikes and “our friends were updated.”

An Israeli Defence Forces official didn’t say how many sites were targeted but told journalists the port is the main entry point for Iranian weapons. The official didn’t say whether it was Israel’s first attack on Yemen.

Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Yemen was subjected to a “blatant Israeli aggression” targeting fuel storage facilities and the province’s power station. He said the attacks aim “to increase the suffering of the people and to pressure Yemen to stop supporting Gaza.”

Abdulsalam said the attacks will only make the people of Yemen and its armed forces more determined to support Gaza.

Mohamed Ali al-Houthi of the Supreme Political Council in Yemen wrote on X that “there will be impactful strikes.”

Fuel storage facilities, power company hit

Al-Masirah TV, a media outlet controlled by Houthi rebels in Yemen, said Saturday’s strikes on storage facilities for oil and diesel at the port and on the local electricity company caused deaths and injuries, including severe burns. It said there was a large fire at the port and power cuts were widespread.

Health officials in Yemen said a number of people were killed and others injured, but it did not elaborate.

The drone attack killed one person in the centre of Tel Aviv and wounded at least 10 others near the U.S. Embassy.

The war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 in southern Israel, has resulted in the deaths of over 38,600 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million people and triggered widespread hunger.

In the October attacks on Israel, 1,200 people, including several Canadian citizens, were killed, according to Israeli tallies. Militants took about 250 people hostage, with about a third of those believed to be dead and 120 remaining in captivity. Dozens of have been freed and repatriated since Oct. 7.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said its military struck the Houthis in Yemen on Saturday to send a message after they harmed an Israeli citizen.

“The fire that is currently burning in Hodeidah is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear,” Gallant 
said in a statement. “The Houthis attacked us over 200 times. The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them, and we will do this in any place where it may be required.”

Virtually all projectiles fired from Yemen toward Israel have so far been intercepted. Israel said air defences detected the drone on Friday, but an “error” occurred and “there was no interception.”

Since January, U.S. and British forces have been striking targets in Yemen in response to attacks by the Houthis on commercial shipping that the rebels have described as retaliation for Israel’s actions in the war in Gaza. However, many of the ships targeted are not linked to Israel.

The joint force airstrikes have so far done little to deter the Iran-backed force.

Analysts and Western intelligence services have long accused Iran of arming the Houthis, a claim Tehran denies. In recent years, U.S. naval forces have intercepted a number of ships packed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and missile parts en route from Iran to Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

Baby delivered from Palestinian woman killed in strike 

In other developments, at least 13 people were killed in three Israeli airstrikes that hit refugee camps in central Gaza overnight, according to Palestinian health officials, as ceasefire talks in Cairo appeared to make progress. Among the dead in the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps were three children and one woman, according to Palestinian ambulance teams that transported the bodies to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

As well, a medical team delivered a baby from a Palestinian woman killed in an airstrike that hit her home in Nuseirat late Thursday evening.

Ola al-Kurd, 25, was killed along with six others in the blast but was quickly rushed by emergency workers to Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. Hours later, doctors told The Associated Press that a baby boy had been delivered on Friday.

The still-unnamed newborn was stable but had suffered from a shortage of oxygen and was placed in an incubator, Dr. Khalil Dajran said.

Ola’s husband and a relative survived the strike, “while everyone else died,” Majid al-Kurd, the deceased woman’s cousin, said Saturday.

“The baby is in good health based on what doctors said.”