Israeli air strikes hit rebel-held Sanaa’s international airport and other targets in Yemen on Thursday as the head of the UN’s World Health Organization said he and his team prepared to fly out.
Yemen’s civil aviation authority said the airport planned to reopen on Friday after the strikes that it said occurred while the UN aircraft “was getting ready for its scheduled flight”.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether they knew at the time that WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was there. Israel’s attack came a day after the Iran-backed Huthi rebels claimed the firing of a missile and two drones at Israel.
Yemen’s Huthis have stepped up their attacks against Israel since late November when a ceasefire took effect between Israel and another Iran-backed group, Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The Huthis Al-Masirah TV said the Israeli strikes killed six people, after earlier Huthi statements said two people died at the rebel-held capital’s airport, and another at Ras Issa port.
The strikes targeting the airport, military facilities and power stations in rebel areas marked the second time since December 19 that Israel has hit targets in Yemen after rebel missile fire towards Israel.
In his latest warning to the rebels, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would “continue until the job is done”.
“We are determined to cut this branch of terrorism from the Iranian axis of evil,” he said in a video statement.
– Yemenis depend on aid –
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced the “escalation” in hostilities between Israel and the Huthis and called the Sanaa airport strikes “especially alarming”.
He said bombing transportation infrastructure posed a threat to humanitarian operations in Yemen, where 80 percent of the population is dependent on aid.
Tedros was in Yemen to seek the release of UN staff detained for months by the Huthis, and to assess the humanitarian situation.
He said he and other UN staff were about to board their flight when “the airport came under aerial bombardment”.
“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters from where we were — and the runway were damaged,” Tedros said on X, adding that he and United Nations staff were safe.
A witness told AFP that “more than six” attacks struck the rebel-held capital’s airport, with raids also targeting the adjacent Al-Dailami air base.
A series of strikes also targeted a power station in Hodeida, on the rebel-held coast, a witness and Al-Masirah TV said.
Following rebel attacks against Israel, Israeli strikes had already twice this year hit Hodeida, a major entry point for humanitarian aid to impoverished Yemen, which has been ravaged for years by its own war.
On December 19, after the rebels fired a missile towards Israel and badly damaged a school, Israel for the first time struck targets in Sanaa. It said the strikes were against ports and energy infrastructure that “effectively contributed to” Huthi military actions.
Huthi media said those strikes killed nine people.
In the latest attacks, the Israeli military said its “fighter jets conducted intelligence-based strikes on military targets belonging to the Huthi terrorist regime”.
– ‘Iranian weapons’ –
The targets included “military infrastructure” at the airport and power stations in Sanaa and Hodeida, as well as other facilities at Hodeida, Salif and Ras Kanatib ports, an Israeli statement said.
The targets were used by Huthis “to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials,” the statement said.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned Israel’s strikes as a “clear violation of international peace and security and an undeniable crime against the heroic and noble people of Yemen”.
Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose top leaders Israel has killed during the war in the Gaza Strip, condemned the attack as an “aggression” against its “brothers from Yemen”.
Almost a week ago, on December 21, Israel’s military and emergency services said a projectile fired from Yemen wounded 16 people in Israel’s commercial centre, Tel Aviv.
The Huthis have repeatedly fired missiles and drones at Israel since the Gaza war began in October last year, claiming solidarity with the Palestinians.
They have similarly attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, waters vital to world trade.
Scores of drone and missile attacks on cargo ships have prompted reprisal strikes against Huthi targets by US and sometimes British forces.
In July, a Huthi drone attack on Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting the first Israeli retaliation on Hodeida.
The Huthis control large parts of Yemen after seizing the capital and ousting the internationally recognised government in September 2014.
A Saudi-led coalition in March 2015 began a military campaign to dislodge them that was unsuccessful, despite what the Yemen Data Project, an independent tracker, said were more than 25,000 coalition air raids.
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