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The Israeli military said it struck several Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday, a day after a drone launched by the Iranian-backed group hit Tel Aviv.
The Israeli assaults killed at least three people and wounded more than 80, according to media reports.
The Israeli strikes appeared to be the first on Yemeni soil since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, the Associated Press reported, and they threatened to open a new front in the region as Israel battles proxies of Iran.
A number of “military targets” were hit in the port city of Hodeidah in western Yemen, a Houthi stronghold, the Israeli army said, adding that its military operation was in response to “hundreds of attacks” against Israel in recent months.
The “extensive operational strike” on Saturday was carried out “in order to stop and repel the Houthi’s terror attacks after nine months of continuous aerial attacks toward Israeli territory,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a posting on X.
“The Houthis attacked us over 200 times. The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement. “And we will do this in any place where it may be required.”
Speaking Saturday evening after the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would defend itself “by all means.”
“Anyone who harms us will pay a very heavy price for their aggression,” Netanyahu said in a televised address, claiming the Hodeidah port was an entry point for Iranian weapons.
The BBC reported that Houthi-linked news outlets said three people were killed and more than 80 injured in Saturday’s strikes, in what Houthi official Mohammed Abdulsalam said was a “brutal Israel aggression against Yemen.”
The Ministry of Health in Sanaa said that 80 people were wounded in a preliminary toll of the strikes in Hodeidah, most of them with severe burns, the AP reported.
On Sunday morning, the IDF said it had shot down a missile fired from Yemen before it crossed into Israel’s air space. It added that air sirens had been activated in Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat “following the possibility of falling shrapnel.”
Meanwhile, Netanyahu denounced a ruling by the top United Nations court on Friday that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful. The nonbinding opinion called for the occupation to end, and for settlement construction to stop immediately, in an unprecedented condemnation of Israel’s rule over the lands it captured 57 years ago.
Netanyahu said the territories are part of the Jewish people’s historic homeland. But the breadth of the decision could impact international opinion and fuel moves for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, the AP reported.
The judges pointed to a wide list of policies, including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians, all of which it said violated international law.
The court said Israel had no right to sovereignty in the territories, was violating international laws against acquiring territory by force and was impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
