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.”
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.”
