‘Blood Of Israeli Citizens Has A Price’: Israel Strikes Houthi-Controlled Areas Of Yemen, Retaliates To Tel Aviv Attack

Israeli warplanes struck the Houthi-controlled Yemeni port of Hodeidah Saturday, a day after a drone attack by the Houthi rebels killed a civilian in Tel Aviv, both sides said.

The strikes, which triggered a raging fire and plumes of black smoke, are the first claimed by Israel in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country, some 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) away, analysts said.

“The blood of Israeli citizens has a price,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said after the Hodeida strikes, adding more operations against the Iran-backed Huthis would follow “if they dare to attack us”.

“The fire that is currently burning in Hodeida, is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear.”

Just hours after Friday’s strike in Tel Aviv, Gallant had vowed Israel would retaliate against the Huthis, who control swathes of Yemen, including much of its Red Sea coast.

The Israeli military said its warplanes hit “military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime” Saturday, a day after the drone attack claimed by the Yemeni rebels killed a civilian in Tel Aviv.

Israeli “fighter jets struck military targets of the Huthi terrorist regime in the area of Hodeida port in Yemen in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the state of Israel in recent months,” a military statement said.

The Huthis have previously claimed attacks on Israeli cities including Ashdod, Haifa and Eilat, but Friday’s strike on Tel Aviv appears to have been the first to breach Israel’s vaunted air defences.

‘Brutal aggression’

In a statement on social media, top Huthi official Mohammed Abdulsalam reported a “brutal Israeli aggression against Yemen.”

The attack targeted “fuel storage facilities and a power plant” in Hodeida “to pressure Yemen to stop supporting” Palestinians in the Gaza war, he said.

The Huthi-run health ministry said there were deaths and injuries in the Hodeida strikes, but it did not give a toll.

In a statement carried by the Huthi-run Al Masirah television, it said several people suffered “serious burns”.

Footage aired by Al Masirah, which AFP could not independently verify, showed a massive blaze on the seafront, with a large plume of black smoke rising into the sky.

An AFP correspondent in Hodeida reported hearing several large explosions and seeing smoke over the port.

Fuel pumps closed across the port city, a key lifeline for imports and international relief for the millions of Yemenis in need after a more than a decade of war.

Hodeida has been hard hit by a series of strikes carried out by Britain and the United States since January in response to attacks by Huthi rebels on commercial shipping in the Red Sea

The Huthis have attacked at least 88 commercial vessels since November in a campaign they say targets Israeli-linked shipping in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza war.

UN chief Antonio Guterres had appealed for “maximum restraint” after the Tel Aviv drone strike to avoid “further escalation in the region”.

But Huthi politburo member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti swiftly threatened revenge for the Hodeida strikes.

“The Zionist entity will pay the price for targeting civilian facilities, and we will meet escalation with escalation,” he said in a post on social media.

Hodeida port, a critical entry point for imports and international aid for Houthi-held parts of Yemen, had remained largely untouched through the decade-long war between the rebels and the internationally recognised government propped up by neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

“Traders now fear that this will exacerbate the already critical food security and humanitarian situation in northern Yemen, as the majority of trade flows through this port,” said Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group.

He said the Israeli strikes “would likely be perceived by many Yemenis as an attack on their homeland, which could bolster Huthi recruitment and funding.”

Hezbollah, Hamas Fire Rockets

Hezbollah and its Palestinian ally Hamas said they launched rocket barrages at Israeli positions Saturday to avenge a strike that injured civilians in south Lebanon and the Gaza war toll.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier Saturday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Syrian nationals, including children, had been injured after an “enemy drone targeted an empty four-wheel drive” near their tent, less than four kilometres from the border.

Doctor Mouenes Kalakesh who heads the Marjayoun government hospital said a woman and her three children, two of them minors, had been admitted for shrapnel injuries after the strike outside Burj al-Muluk.

Among them was an 11-year-old boy in critical condition after he sustained shrapnel injuries and a head wound, Kalakesh told AFP.

Hezbollah said it launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” on Dafna, an area in Israel’s north that the group said it was targeting for the first time, “in response to the attack on civilians”.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned his Iran-backed group would hit new targets in Israel if more civilians were killed in Israeli strikes.

Later Saturday, Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said they fired a rocket salvo from south Lebanon towards an Israeli military position in the Upper Galilee “in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip”.

The Israeli army said a total of 45 “projectiles” had been fired from Lebanon Saturday afternoon, towards the occupied Golan Heights and the Galilee, reporting no casualties.

The army said it struck “the launcher… in southern Lebanon from which the projectiles were launched toward the Golan Heights,” also targeting “an additional Hezbollah launcher”.

On Thursday, Israeli strikes killed at least five people, including the commander of a Hamas-allied group in Lebanon, militant groups and a security source said.

On Tuesday, Lebanese official media said separate Israeli strikes in south Lebanon killed five Syrians, three of them children, with Hezbollah announcing rocket fire at Israel in retaliation.

The violence since October has killed at least 515 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.

Most of the dead have been fighters, but they have included at least 104 civilians.

On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.