Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said that Israeli airstrikes on Thursday killed nine people, after the group fired a missile toward Israel, badly damaging a school.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened further retaliation.
The Houthis, who control most of Yemen’s population centers, have repeatedly launched missiles at Israel since the Gaza war broke out more than a year ago.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Israel has previously hit back against targets in Yemen, but Thursday’s were the first against the rebel-held capital, Sana’a.
“The Israeli enemy targeted ports in Hodeida and power stations in Sana’a, and the Israeli aggression resulted in the martyrdom of nine civilian martyrs,” rebel leader Abdul Malik al-Huthi said in a lengthy speech broadcast by the rebels’ al-Masira TV.
Al-Masira had earlier reported the raids that “targeted two central power plants” in and around Sana’a, while in Hodeida it said “the enemy launched four aggressive raids targeting the port ... and two raids targeting” an oil facility.
It said the strikes killed seven people at al-Saleef port, while two more were killed and others wounded in the strike on the oil facility.
Hodeida is a key entry point for fuel and humanitarian aid to impoverished Yemen, which has been ravaged for years by its own war.
Israel said it struck the targets in Yemen after intercepting a missile fired from the country, a strike the rebels subsequently claimed.
Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said the rebels fired ballistic missiles at “two specific and sensitive military targets ... in the occupied Yaffa area,” referring to the Jaffa region near Tel Aviv.
Israel’s military said it “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen — including ports and energy infrastructure in Sana’a, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions.”
Photographs from Ramat Gan, in the Tel Aviv area, showed part of a school building pancaked from an explosion, behind a sculpture of an animal with polka dots.
The Houthis said later that they launched a drone at a “military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied Yaffa area.”
There was no confirmation from the Israeli side.
The military said inquiries into the initial attack showed “it is likely that the damage was caused by partial interception of the missile launched from Yemen and that the missile warhead was the part that exploded and damaged the school.”
The rebels belong to the Iran-backed “axis of resistance,” along with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has been weakened after a conflict with Israel and the loss of its Syrian supply line following former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s ouster.
“After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil,” Netanyahu said. “The Houthis are learning and will learn the hard way, that those who strike Israel will pay a very heavy price for it.”
The Houthi leader said: “We are fully convinced of our position and are ready to confront any level of escalation.”
Iran denounced the subsequent Israeli raids as a “flagrant violation of the principles and norms of international law and the UN Charter.”
Palestinian militant group Hamas has also called Israel’s retaliatory strikes a “dangerous development.”
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