Israeli airstrikes hit Yemen’s rebel-held capital, port city

Dubai: A series of intense Israeli airstrikes shook Yemen’s rebel-held capital and a port city early on Thursday and killed at least nine people, officials said, shortly after a Houthi missile targeted central Israel.

Thursday’s strikes risk further escalating conflict with the Iranian-backed Houthis, whose attacks on the Red Sea corridor have drastically impacted global shipping.

The rebels have so far avoided the same level of intense military strikes that have targeted Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, fellow members of Tehran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance”.

Israel’s military said it conducted two waves of strikes in a preplanned operation that began early Thursday and involved 14 fighter jets.

The military said the first wave of strikes targeted Houthi infrastructure at the ports of Hodeida, Salif and the Ras Isa oil terminal on the Red Sea.

Then, in a second wave of strikes, the military said its fighter jets targeted Houthi energy infrastructure in Sanaa.

“After Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement released Thursday.

“They are learning and they will learn the hard way, that whoever harms Israel pays a very heavy price for it.”

The Houthi-controlled satellite channel al-Masirah said that some of the strikes targeted power stations in the capital, posting videos of flames engulfing one structure, as civil defence workers doused it in water, trying to extinguish the fire.

The strikes on the two power plants will worsen the electricity crisis faced by Sanaa, where those who can afford it run gas generators or get power from private providers because of the city’s long-failing infrastructure. “Approximately one quarter of Sanaa — particularly shops, stores and commercial facilities — will face immediate and severe disruptions,” said Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen analyst. “In a city already staggering under a profound economic crisis, 2025 is set to be exceptionally

challenging.”