Israeli warplanes hit targets across Yemen for the second time in a week, including the international airport, energy facilities and ports, marking an escalation of strikes in retaliation for recent missile attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants.
The Israeli military said on Thursday it had conducted “intelligence-based strikes” on targets used by the Houthis for “military activities” as well as entry points into Yemen used by Iranian officials and weapons smugglers.
Among the sites struck were Sana’a international airport, two power stations and three ports on the country’s western coast including Hodeidah.
At least four people were killed and 16 injured during the strikes, according to local media reports from Yemen, although the scale of the damage to the various facilities remains unclear.
A humanitarian delegation led by World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was present at Sana’a airport during the attacks.
According to a statement by Tedros, one of the delegation’s air crew members was injured, although he said the UN and WHO officials were “safe”.
“We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave,” he added.
According to Israeli media reports, some two dozen fighter jets took part in the daytime raid, the fourth such direct attack by Israel on Yemen since last summer and second in as many weeks, after the Houthis recently stepped up missile attacks on the Jewish state.
“We are determined to sever this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil. We will persist in this until we complete the job,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.
At least five ballistic missiles have been fired at central Israel over the past 10 days, including early on Christmas morning, sending millions of residents rushing to bomb shelters.
On two occasions Israeli air defences failed to fully intercept the incoming projectiles, with one landing on a school and another in a playground in the Tel Aviv area, lightly injuring 16 people.
The Houthis, who control northern Yemen and the capital, began firing on merchant shipping in the Red Sea and launching hundreds of armed drones and missiles at Israel after Gaza-based militant group Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack, saying they were acting in solidarity with the Palestinians. Their assaults severely disrupted shipping through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.
Together with Hamas, Lebanese militants Hizbollah and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis formed an Iran-led “axis of resistance” whose capabilities have been severely degraded by Israel in recent months.
A naval task force, led by US and UK forces, has attempted to protect merchant vessels in the region. Over the past week coalition jets themselves launched air strikes on what the US military described as Houthi “command and control” centres in Sana’a.
The militants’ leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, was giving his weekly televised address when the bombings began.
Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, on Thursday again vowed to “hunt down” the Houthi leadership and “decapitate” the group like he said Israel had done to Hamas and Hizbollah.
Yet Houthi officials have promised to continue their attacks on Israel and international shipping so long as the war in Gaza continues.
Cartography by Steven Bernard