A handout picture obtained from Yemen’s Huthi Ansarullah Media Center show a huge column of fire erupting following reported strikes by Israeli fighter jets in the Yemeni rebel-held port city of Hodeidah on Saturday.
Ansarullah Media Center/AFP via Getty Images
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Ansarullah Media Center/AFP via Getty Images
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had struck targets in the Houthi-controlled regions of Yemen, close to the port city of Hodeidah, following the months-long series of Houthi attacks on Israeli targets. Those included a drone assault on Tel Aviv Friday that killed an Israeli citizen and injured 10 others.
In what it called an operational update posted on social media, the Israel Defense Forces said the locations bombed by its fighter jets in Yemen had been military targets.
A spokesperson for the Houthis posted on social media that the Israeli jets had attacked civilian facilities, oil tanks and the electrical power station in the city of Hodeidah, in an effort to pressure the group to end its support for Gaza — something the spokesperson, who goes by the online handle @abdulsalamsalah, said was a “dream that will not come true.”
He said the Israeli retaliation would only “increase the determination of the Yemeni people” who would continue to support the Palestinian people in what he termed “the most just cause on the face of the earth.”
Following that drone attack Friday that hit an apartment building close to the Tel Aviv beachfront, the Israeli military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, had said Israel was fighting a “multifront war” that included the Houthis, alongside Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria.
He said the drone was provided by Iran to the Houthis, and the circumstances were being investigated.