Israel attacks Yemen port after Houthi claim drone attack in Tel Aviv

The attacks have “made it clear to our enemies that there is no place that the long arm of the State of Israel will not reach,” he said.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed group, have been attacking ships off the coast of Yemen for much of the year in strikes they say are aimed at ending Israel’s offensive on Gaza while blocking key trade routes. In recent months, the United States and Britain have launched airstrikes against the Houthis in a failed attempt to end the maritime attacks.

Israel’s attack on Saturday was also unlikely to deter the Houthis, Yemeni analysts said, and could have the opposite effect, allowing the group to consolidate its power at home while galvanizing Yemenis to mobilize against yet another foreign threat. The strikes also signaled a further expansion of the war in Gaza, adding a new, volatile dynamic to what has become a mounting regional conflict that has also drawn in militant groups in Lebanon and Iraq.

A Houthis military spokesman said “multiple” Israeli raids had hit the port, a power plant and fuel tanks in Hodeida, a struggling city that serves as an entry point for imports to much of Yemen. He vowed the group would retaliate.

“We will respond to this blatant Israeli aggression and will not hesitate to attack the enemy’s vital targets,” military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a televised statement. “We have prepared, with the help of God Almighty, for a long war with this enemy until the aggression stops and the siege on the Palestinian people is lifted,” he said.

Footage from the aftermath of Saturday’s strikes showed black smoke billowing from massive fires at the port, and residents of Hodeidah bathed in an orange glow as they looked on. Al-Masirah, a Houthis-run outlet, quoted the Health Ministry as saying the strikes had killed at least three people and wounded at least 87, most with severe burns. The channel broadcast footage from what appeared to be a hospital, with injured people on stretchers lining a corridor.

The Houthi drone that struck Tel Aviv on Friday evaded Israel’s sophisticated air defense network and struck the city without even sounding its air raid sirens — a failure Israeli officials attributed in part to “human error.” Weapons experts said it was possible the Houthis had upgraded one of their existing drones for use in the strike by increasing its range.

An Israel Defense Forces official said Saturday that Israel carried out the strike on military and “dual-use” targets after months of Houthi rocket and missile attacks on the Red Sea and Israeli territory. The official would not comment on reports of involvement by other national militaries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, the United States and Britain, although those allies were aware of the operation, the official said.

“The fire currently raging in Hodeidah can be seen all over the Middle East and its meaning is clear,” Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said in a statement. “The Houthis have attacked us more than 200 times. The first time they injured an Israeli civilian, we hit them. And we will do this wherever it is necessary. The blood of Israeli civilians has a price.”

Netanyahu said in his remarks that the Hodeida port “was used for military purposes, it was used as an entry point for lethal weapons supplied by Iran to the Houthis. They used this weapon to attack Israel, to attack the countries in the region, to attack an international shipping route, one of the most important shipping routes in the world.”

It was also the entry point for fuel and food entering Yemen, a country that has suffered greatly from a decade of civil war as people struggled to obtain basic necessities. Saturday’s attacks could jeopardize those supplies, said Mohammed al-Basha, a senior Middle East analyst at Navanti, a risk assessment group.

The strikes had led to “the complete destruction of oil tanks in the port of Hodeida, with extensive damage also reported at the Hodeida power plant,” he said in a message. The destruction, he added, was expected to “cause severe fuel shortages in northern Yemen, significantly impacting essential services such as diesel generators in hospitals. The situation is likely to be exacerbated by the intense summer heat, increasing the suffering of the local population.”

While ships docked at the port and grain silos in the area were not affected by the strikes, there was damage to tanks holding refined oil belonging to the Yemen Petroleum Company, he said. There were also concerns that “poorly equipped firefighters” would not be able to quickly extinguish the blaze at the port.

The attack has “caused panic in Houthi-controlled areas, with residents rushing to gas stations in fear of an impending fuel crisis,” he said. In a bid to calm the public, the Houthi-controlled Yemen Petroleum Company was forced to issue a statement saying there were sufficient fuel supplies.

A 34-year-old Yemeni man whose family owns a home in Hodeida, near the port, said the house had been damaged in the fire caused by the strikes. The man, who lives outside Yemen and asked to be identified by his first name, Hareth, said a relative had looked at the house on Saturday. It was in one of the “poorest neighborhoods,” he said, where people’s homes were made of wood in the “traditional style.” The area had been targeted before, during Yemen’s civil war, but had survived.

“This time everything was burned,” he said.

Fahim reported from Istanbul, Rom from Tel Aviv, Hendrix from Jerusalem and El-Chamaa from Beirut.