Dubai, Dec 20: A series of intense Israeli airstrikes shook Yemen’s rebel-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 rebels have so far avoided the same level of intense military strikes that have targeted Palestinian militant 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 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.
The Houthi-controlled satellite channel al-Masirah said that some of the strikes targeted power stations in the capital, posting videos of flames engulfing one structure, as civil defense workers doused it in water, trying to extinguish the fire.
The channel, citing its correspondent in the port city of Hodeida, said that at least seven people had been killed at Salif, while another two had been killed at the Ras Isa oil terminal. Others suffered wounds at the Hodeida port as well, it said.
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.”
“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, and a large explosion was heard overhead at the time.
In Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, a large piece of shrapnel from the missile collapsed a school building there, without causing any injuries.
The military official said that the Houthis have fired more than 200 missiles and UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, at Israel since October 7, 2023.
Brig Gen Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, claimed the attack hours later in a prerecorded video statement, saying the rebels fired two of its “Palestine” ballistic missiles at Israel.
Israel previously struck Hodeida and its oil infrastructure in July after a Houthi drone attack killed one person and wounded 10 in Tel Aviv. In September, Israel struck Hodeida again, killing at least four people after a rebel missile targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion airport as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was arriving back to the country.
American forces have also launched a series of strikes on the Houthis over nearly a year because of Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea corridor.
On Monday, the US military’s Central Command said that it hit “a key command-and-control facility” operated by the Houthis in Sanaa, later identified as the al-Ardi complex once home to the government’s Defense Ministry.