Yemeni Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for a missile attack on Tel Aviv airport on Friday, December 27. The Houthis also claimed, in a statement, to have attacked the city of Tel Aviv (central Israel) and a ship in the Arabian Sea with drones. “Israeli aggression will only increase the determination […] of the great Yemeni people to continue to support the Palestinian people”, according to them. In Israel, the army claimed that a missile launched from Yemen had been intercepted before crossing Israeli territory. Warning sirens were triggered in several areas of central Israel due to the possibility of falling debris after the interception.
These attacks came a few hours after Israeli strikes against sites that the Houthis control in Yemen, including Sanaa international airport, where the head of the WHO was located, killing at least six people according to the insurgents. The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was at the capital’s airport at the time of the bombing and told X that he was “safe and sound.” However, a member of the crew of his plane was injured.
Mr. Tedros is part of a delegation which went to Yemen to try to free 17 UN members detained by the Houthis and to take stock of the catastrophic health situation in the country in the grip of a civil war. According to a press release from the local civil aviation authority, the strikes occurred when the UN delegation’s aircraft was “preparing to carry out a scheduled flight”.
The Israeli army confirmed these raids, which it said were carried out against “military targets” in reaction to “repeated attacks” by the Houthis.
The latter control large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa, and are supported by Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy. Since the start of the war triggered in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023 by an unprecedented attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil, they have launched numerous attacks against Israel, in “solidarity” with the Palestinians.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that his country would continue to strike the Houthis “until the job is done.” “We are determined to cut off this terrorist branch from the Iranian axis of evil.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the “escalation” of tensions between Israel and the Houthis in a statement. He added that the strikes followed “a year of escalation by the Houthis.”
On Thursday, Sanaa airport was the target of “more than six” strikes, a witness told AFP. The nearby al-Dailami airbase was also targeted. In the Hodeida region, in western Yemen, a power plant was also hit by the strikes, according to a witness and a rebel statement. These strikes constitute “a Zionist crime against the entire Yemeni people”, reacted Mohammed Abdelsalam, a spokesperson for the Houthis.
The Israeli army specified that it had also targeted the power plants of Hezyaz and Ras Katanib” as well as “military infrastructure in the ports of Hodeida, Salif and Ras Katanib, on the west coast.” “We will hunt down all Houthi leaders , hit them like we did elsewhere. No one will be able to escape us,” threatened Defense Minister Israel Katz.
The rebels also attack ships linked according to them to Israel, the United States or the United Kingdom, in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden, despite retaliatory strikes on their territory also carried out by the army American. They are part of what Iran calls the “axis of resistance” against Israel, which also includes Hamas, Iraqi groups and Lebanese Hezbollah.
Iran condemned the Israeli strikes, as did Hamas. The raids come a day after the Houthis claimed responsibility for firing a ballistic missile and two drones against Israel.
On Monday, Benjamin Netanyahu said he had asked the army to “destroy the infrastructure” of the rebels, whose missile had injured 16 people two days earlier in Tel Aviv, in central Israel. Most Houthi attacks against Israel were countered or caused only material damage. But in July, an Israeli civilian was killed in Tel Aviv by the explosion of a drone fired from Yemen. Israel also responded with deadly strikes on Hodeida.