An Israeli airstrike killed the prime minister of the Houthi rebel-controlled government in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, the Houthis said on Saturday. He was the most senior Houthi official killed in the Israeli-US campaign against the Iranian-backed rebels.
Ahmed al-Rahawi was killed in Thursday’s strike in Sana’a along with a number of ministers, the rebels said in a statement.
Other ministers and officials were wounded, the statement added, without providing details.
Photo: EPA
The premier was targeted along with other members of his Houthi-controlled government during a “routine workshop held by the government to evaluate its activities and performance over the past year,” the Houthi statement said.
Thursday’s strike took place as the rebel-owned television station was broadcasting a speech by Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the secretive leader of the rebel group, in which he was sharing updates on the latest Gaza developments and vowing retaliation against Israel.
Al-Rahawi was not part of the inner circle around al-Houthi that runs the military and strategic affairs of the group. His government, like the previous ones, was tasked with running the day-to-day civilian affairs in Sana’a and other Houthi-held areas.
The strike that killed the prime minister targeted a meeting for Houthi leaders in a villa in Beit Baws, an ancient village in southern Sana’a, three tribal leaders told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
On Thursday, the Israeli military said it “precisely struck a Houthi terrorist regime military target in the area of Sana’a in Yemen.”
Late on Saturday, the military in a statement confirmed killing al-Rahawi “along with additional senior officials.”
It said senior officials among the dozens at the facility struck were responsible for “terror actions” against Israel.
“Yemen endures a lot for the victory of the Palestinian people,” al-Rahawi said following an Israeli strike on Sunday last week that struck a facility owned by the country’s main oil company, which is controlled by the rebels in Sana’a, as well as a power plant.
The strike came three days after the Houthis launched a ballistic missile toward Israel that its military described as the first cluster bomb the rebels had launched at it since 2023.
Al-Rahawi was an ally of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and was appointed as prime minister by the Houthis in August last year.
US and Israeli strikes have killed dozens of people in Yemen. One US strike in April hit a prison holding African migrants in northern Sadaa province, killing at least 68 people and wounding 47 others.
Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst with the Crisis Group International, a Brussels-based think tank, called the killing of the Houthi prime minister a “serious setback” for the rebels.
It marks a shift from striking the rebels’ infrastructure to targeting their leaders, including senior military figures, which “poses a greater threat to their command structure,” he said.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS