THE Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen early today, hours after Israeli warplanes struck several Houthi targets in the Arabian Peninsula country.
The Israeli air strikes — in response to a deadly Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv — were the first time the IDF is known to have responded to repeated Houthi attacks throughout its nine-month destruction of Gaza.
The Israeli army confirmed the air strikes in the western Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, a Houthi stronghold, late on Saturday. It said the strikes, carried out by US-made F-15 and F-35 warplanes, were a response to hundreds of Houthi attacks.
The Health Ministry in Yemen said the Israeli action killed six people and wounded 83 others, many with severe burns. Another three people were missing.
Israel, along with the US, Britain and other Western allies with forces in the region, have intercepted almost all of the Houthis’ missiles and drones. But early on Friday a Houthi drone penetrated Israel’s air defences then crashed into Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial and cultural capital, killing one person.
The Israeli military said it hit Hodeidah because the area is used to deliver Iranian arms to Yemen.
In addition to fighting Hamas, the Israeli military has been engaged in daily clashes with the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. These clashes have raised concerns that the fighting could spill over into a full-blown war with Lebanon and beyond.
Yemen has been engulfed in civil war since 2014, when the Houthis seized much of northern Yemen and forced the internationally recognised government to flee from Sanaa.
A Western-backed Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year in support of government forces. The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
The Israeli military has killed more than 39,800 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry, since it began its latest offensive on the Palestinians following Hamas’s shocking attack on October 7.
Medical journal The Lancet, however, warned recently that 186,000 or more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.
