– / AFP
This photo obtained from Yemen’s Huthi Ansarullah Media Center shows a massive pillar of fire following reported strikes in the Yemeni rebel-held port city of Hodeidah on July 20, 2024.
YEMEN – These are particularly impressive images. Israeli warplanes carried out strikes on Saturday, July 20, on targets of the Houthi rebels in Hodeida in Yemen, causing a huge fire in the city’s port, the day after a deadly drone attack on Tel Aviv carried out by these insurgents.
These strikes have made “80 injured, most suffering from serious burns”the Yemeni Health Ministry said in a statement.
These are the first strikes announced by Israel against Yemen, a country at war where the Houthis, claiming to act in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, have for several months been carrying out attacks against ships presented as linked to Israel, in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden.
Of the “Israeli army warplanes struck military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the Hodeida port area in Yemen, in response to hundreds of attacks carried out against the State of Israel” by these rebels in recent months, the Israeli army said in a statement.
The port attacked by the Israeli air force serves as a “main supply route for Iranian weapons shipments from Iran to Yemen, starting with the drone used in Friday morning’s attack” in Tel Aviv, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised address in the evening.
“We will defend ourselves by all means”
“I have a message for the enemies of Israel: make no mistake. We will defend ourselves by all means, on all fronts. Whoever attacks us will pay a very heavy price for his aggression.”Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told him in a televised address.
“The Zionist entity will pay the price for targeting civilian facilities, and we will respond to escalation with escalation.”warned Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, a member of the political bureau of the Houthis, who control vast regions of Yemen including Hodeida.
In a statement on social media, a senior Houthi official, Mohammed Abdelsalam, denounced a “brutal aggression by Israel” against the strategic port of Hodeida. According to him, the attack targeted “fuel storage facilities and a power plant” in Hodeida “to put pressure on Yemen to stop supporting” the Palestinians.
Al-Massirah TV channel broadcast footage of Yemenis receiving what it said were treatment in hospitals after the strikes. Several of them were bandaged and lying on stretchers. A man interviewed by the channel said many of the injured were port workers.
On Friday, a drone attack carried out by the Houthis killed one person in Tel Aviv after evading the Israeli defense system, in the midst of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas that broke out on October 7.
The Houthis have threatened to turn Tel Aviv into a “primary target” future attacks that will reach ” in depth “ Israeli territory. Since November, these rebels have been carrying out attacks against merchant ships presented as linked to Israel, in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden, maritime zones essential for world trade.
In recent months, they have also claimed several attacks targeting the Israeli city of Eilat on the Red Sea, but the vast majority of the projectiles have been intercepted.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.fr
