CAIRO: Israel launched strikes against ports and energy infrastructure in Houthi-held parts of Yemen early on Thursday and threatened more attacks against the fighter group, which has launched hundreds of missiles at Israel over the past year.

As Israeli jets were in the air, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile headed towards central Israel which destroyed a school building in the town of Ramat Efal with what a military spokesperson described as falling shrapnel. Houthis claimed the missile attack.

Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said the rebels fired hypersonic ballistic missiles at “two specific and sensitive military targets... in the occupied Yaffa area”, referring to the Jaffa region near Tel Aviv.

The Israeli attack, involving 14 fighter jets and other aircraft, came in two waves, with a first series of strikes on the ports of Salif and Ras Issa and a second series hitting the capital Sanaa, military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters.

“We made extensive preparations for these operations with efforts to refine our intelligence and to optimise the strikes,” he said. Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthis, said the airstrikes killed nine people, seven in Salif and two in the Ras Issa oil facility, both in the western province of Hodeidah.

In Sanaa, the strikes also targeted two central power stations south and north of the capital, Sanaa, which Al Masirah said had cut electricity to thousands of families.

The Israeli attacks followed a strike on Monday by US aircraft against a command and control facility operated by the Houthis, which control much of Yemen.

Iran denounced the raids as a “flagrant violation of the principles and norms of international law and the UN Charter”.

Threats, warnings

The Houthis — who have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November last year, in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s conflict with Hamas — said they had targeted the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on the same night with two ballistic missiles and hit “precise military targets”.

They also vowed to respond to the Israeli attacks. “The Israeli attack will not deter Yemen from responding to this heinous aggression and supporting Gaza,” the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a televised speech.

The Israeli military said specialists were examining the site of the strike in Ramat Efal and it was trying to confirm whether one or two missiles had been fired.

Some Israeli media reported that the missile had hit the school, but Shoshani said the initial indications suggested it was hit by missile debris. One possibility was that the fuel tank “which is an enormous piece of metal, kept going” after the missile was intercepted, he said. “But again, we will be smarter when we see the results at the scene,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2024