Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised the Israel Defense Forces for carrying out a “precise and successful operation” over 1,700 kilometers away from the country’s borders, which he says serves as a clear warning to all enemies of the Jewish state.
The Israeli military launched its first-ever direct large-scale air raid against Yemen on Saturday, targeting the port city of Hodeidah. The attack triggered a massive fire at the port’s oil terminal and left at least 80 people injured, according to a preliminary tally by the health ministry in Sanaa.
“The port we attacked is not an innocent port,” Netanyahu claimed in a video statement released on Saturday evening. “It was used for military purposes, it was used as an entry point for deadly weapons supplied to the Houthis by Iran.”
“This strike comes in direct response to the killer drone attack yesterday that killed one person and injured several others a hundred yards from the US Consulate in Tel Aviv,” the Israeli leader emphasized, just several days before he is scheduled to give a speech before the US Congress in Washington, DC.
The drone attack early Friday, praised by Houthi rebels as a “significant military operation,” left one Israeli citizen dead and at least ten others wounded. The IDF blamed an unspecified “human error” for its failure to intercept the drone or at least issue an alert, even though, according to local media, it had been detected by air defenses in advance.
Israel’s strike on Yemen “makes it clear to our enemies that there is no place that the long arm of Israel will not reach,” Netanyahu added in a Hebrew version of the address, as cited by the Times of Israel.
The Houthi group that controls a large part of Yemen has been attacking Israeli-linked merchant vessels in the region since October, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. A US and UK-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against the group, which they claim to be a proxy of Iran, but the effort appears to have yielded little result.
”The Houthis attacked us over 200 times. The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them. And we will do this in any place where it may be required,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a separate statement on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Houthis have promised to avenge the Israeli raid with more “impactful strikes,” Mohamed Ali al-Houthi of the Supreme Political Council in Yemen wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said that the latest “blatant Israeli aggression” aimed “to increase the suffering of the people and to pressure Yemen to stop supporting Gaza.”