Israel Launches Airstrikes Against Houthis in Yemen as Netanyahu Issues Warning

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli military struck Houthi targets in Yemen early Thursday in response to the militia’s attacks on Israel, and appeared to suggest that Israel might take further action in its campaign to weaken Iran-backed groups.

The announcement about the strikes — which killed nine people, according to Al-Masirah, a TV channel affiliated with the Houthis — came hours after Israel’s military said it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen.

Israeli warplanes struck targets belonging to the Houthis on the “western coast and in inland Yemen,” the military said in a statement. Those included “ports and energy infrastructure” in the capital, Sana, it added in a later statement.

Al-Masirah reported that seven people died in a strike on the port city of Salif, while two others were killed at an oil facility nearby in Ras Isa. Both cities are in western Yemen, not far from the much larger port of Hudaydah, in a part of the country controlled by the Houthis.

Israel’s military said the strikes were aimed at preventing the Houthis from exploiting sites “for military and terrorist purposes, including the smuggling of Iranian weapons to the region.”

For more than a year, the Houthis have been attacking cargo vessels in the Red Sea in a campaign that they say is in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli bombardment in Gaza.