Dramatic video has emerged tonight showing a fearsome blaze trailing the landscape of western Yemen in the wake of devastating Israeli airstrikes on ‘military targets’, including fuel and power stations.
The strikes are understood to be in retaliation for continued Houthi rebel attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and comes just 24 hours after one person was killed by a drone exploding close to the US embassy in Tel Aviv.
Shortly after the fatal attack, Israel had vowed to ‘settle the score’.
On a social media post appearing on X, formerly known as Twitter, at 5.21pm on Saturday, The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it had carried out the strike in the western port city of Al Hudaydah, a Houthi stronghold.
The post said: ‘A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the area of the Al Hudaydah Port in Yemen in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the State of Israel in recent months.’
Israel’s foreign affairs minister, Israel Katz, followed with a statement of X saying that the strike had ‘delivered a severe blow to the Iranian-backed terror organization in Yemen today.’
The minister then called on the international community to take punitive action against Iran, which it has accused of financially supporting the Houthis in their ‘severely damaging’ attacks of Red Sea shipping.
He said: ‘We will strike anyone who strikes us. Iran supports, trains, and finances the Houthi terror organization as part of its regional network of terror organizations aimed at attacking Israel.
‘This is the time for the international community to maximize sanctions on Iran – under its direction, the Houthis are severely damaging Freedom of the seas and trade routes.
‘Iran is the head of the snake – it must be stopped now.’
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam reacted to the strikes and said on X that Yemen had been subjected to a ‘blatant Israeli aggression’ that targeted fuel storage facilities and the province’s power station.
He said the attacks aim ‘to increase the suffering of the people and to pressure Yemen to stop supporting Gaza.’
Abdulsalam said the attacks will only make the people of Yemen and its armed forces more determined to support Gaza.
Media outlet Al-Masirah TV said the strikes on storage facilities for oil and diesel at the port and on the local electricity company had caused deaths and injuries, but gave no further details.
It said there was a large fire at the port and power cuts were widespread.
Health officials in Yemen also said the strikes had killed a number of people and injured others, but did not elaborate.
The strikes came just 24 hours after a fatal drone attack aimed at Tel Aviv.
Footage uploaded to social media on Friday shows the aerial weapon skimming over the Tel Aviv beach and a nearby row of buildings early this morning before an orange flash erupts further inland within seconds.
The video emerged after an Israeli military official told a briefing that ‘a very big drone that can travel long distances crashed into an apartment building’ at 03.12am local time.
The official, who remained anonymous, said the aim was ‘terrorism’, with the rebel group’s ‘main goal to kill civilians in Israel’.
They added the drone had shockingly been detected by the military while airborne, but the alarm was not immediately raised due to ‘human error’.
Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant issued a chilling warning on Friday, claiming: ‘The defence establishment is working to immediately strengthen all defence systems, and will settle the score with anyone who harms the State of Israel or directs terror against it’.
IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that the UAV was apparently launched from Yemen.
‘We are still investigating the incident in depth. From evidence found at the scene, it would appear that the aircraft is an Iranian Samad-3 drone,’ he said.
Yemen’s Houthi group earlier today claimed responsibility for the attack that caused the explosion.
A spokesperson for the Houthi armed forces said in a post on social media Friday that the Iran-aligned group had ‘targeted Tel Aviv in occupied Palestine’.
It claimed that it had used a new drone ‘capable of bypassing interceptor systems and being able to be detected by radars’.
It’s armed wing also released a statement celebrating the attack, saying: ‘Triumphing for the oppression of the Palestinian people and their mujahideen, and in retaliation to the Zionist enemy’s massacres against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip’.
Earlier this week, Houthi rebels took aim at a crude oil tanker in the Red Sea before causing the hapless vessel to burst into flames.
Chios Lion, a Liberia-flagged oil tanker was struck on its port side during the attack on Tuesday.
The Yemen-based Houthi group has been targeting shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden over the last nine months, claiming its actions are in direct response to Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza – an assertion that has been repeatedly dismissed by the UK and its allies.
However, many of the ships targeted are not linked to Israel.
The joint force airstrikes have so far done little to deter the Iran-backed force.
Elsewhere, it was reported that at least 13 people were killed in three Israeli airstrikes that hit refugee camps in central Gaza overnight, according to Palestinian health officials, as ceasefire talks in Cairo appeared to make progress.
Among the dead in Nuseirat Refugee Camp and Bureij Refugee Camp were three children and one woman, according to Palestinian ambulance teams that transported the bodies to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
AP journalists counted 13 corpses at the hospital.
Earlier, a medical team delivered a live baby from a Palestinian woman killed in an airstrike that hit her home in Nuseirat late Thursday evening.
Ola al-Kurd, 25, was killed along with six others in the blast, but was quickly rushed by emergency workers to Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza in the hope of saving the unborn child.
Hours later, doctors told The Associated Press that a baby boy had been delivered.
The still-unnamed newborn is stable but has suffered from a shortage of oxygen and has been placed in an incubator, Dr. Khalil Dajran said on Friday.
The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas terrorists invading southern Israel on October 7, has killed more than 38,900 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been displaced and officials said there is widespread hunger.
Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while terrorists took a further 250 people hostage, including women, children and the elderly.
Around 120 remain in captivity, with a third believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
In Cairo, international mediators, including the United States, are continuing to push Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages in Gaza.
On Friday, the U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that will release Israeli hostages captive by the group in Gaza is ‘inside the 10-yard line,’ but added ‘we know that anything in the last 10 yards are the hardest.’
Fruitless stop-and-start negotiations between the warring sides have been underway since November’s one-week ceasefire, with both Hamas and Israel repeatedly accusing each other of scuppering efforts to reach a deal.