The Israeli army said Saturday it has struck several Houthi targets in western Yemen following a fatal drone attack by the rebel group in Tel Aviv the previous day. The Israeli strikes appeared to be the first on Yemeni soil since the Israel-Hamas war began in October.
“A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the area of the Al Hudaydah Port in Yemen in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the State of Israel in recent months,” the IDF said in a statement that NBC News obtained.
Israel’s airstrikes killed three and injured at least 87 people, said Dr. Anees Alasbahi, spokesperson for the Houthis’ Ministry of Health in Sanaa. Most of the injured sustained severe burns, he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes were a “direct response” to Friday’s attack on Israel.
“The port we attacked is not an innocent port,” he said in a news briefing. “It was used for military purposes, it was used as an entry point for deadly weapons supplied to the Houthis by Iran.”
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam wrote on social media platform X that Yemen was subjected to “blatant Israeli aggression” that targeted fuel storage facilities and the province’s power station. He said the attacks aim “to increase the suffering of the people and to pressure Yemen to stop supporting Gaza.”
Abdulsalam said the attacks will only make the people of Yemen and its armed forces more determined to support Gaza. Mohamed Ali al-Houthi of the Supreme Political Council in Yemen wrote on X that “there will be impactful strikes.”
A media outlet controlled by Houthi rebels in Yemen, Al-Masirah TV, said the strikes on storage facilities for oil and diesel at the port and on the local electricity company caused deaths and injuries, and several people suffered severe burns. It said there was a large fire at the port and power cuts were widespread.
Pictures and videos showed a significant amount of smoke rising from the fiery blast.
In a statement, Hamas condemned the airstrikes that they called a “massacre and a dangerous escalation.”
The Houthis claimed responsibility for a drone strike near a U.S. Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv on Friday that killed at least one person and injured several others.
An explosion rang out after a drone struck the area, an IDF official said in a news briefing.
A 50-year-old man was found dead in an apartment building that appeared to have been hit by the strike, Zaki Heller, a spokesman for Magen David Adom, Israel’s medical emergency service, said in a statement. The IDF official confirmed the death of a civilian and said at least 10 others were injured in the attack.
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