Yemen’s Houthi rebels have attacked Israel with a barrage of ballistic missiles, marking their first such strikes since the conflict involving the United States and Israel with Iran began.
Houthi Missile Attack on Israel
Brigadier-General Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, announced the attack on Saturday on the rebels’ Al Masirah satellite television.
Saree said the rebels fired a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting what he described as “sensitive Israeli military sites” in southern Israel. He added that strikes “will continue until the declared objectives are achieved…and until the aggression against all fronts of the resistance ceases.”
The Israeli military reported intercepting one missile.
The attack followed a statement on Friday from Saree signaling the rebels would join the wider conflict. Sirens sounded around Beersheba and near Israel’s main nuclear research centre overnight Friday into Saturday, though no casualties or damage were reported.
‘Battle in Stages’
The Houthis have controlled Yemen’s capital Sanaa since 2014 and had previously remained outside of the US-Israeli conflict. Their attacks on shipping vessels during the Israel-Hamas war disrupted commercial transit in the Red Sea, a waterway handling approximately $1 trillion in goods annually.
From November 2023 to January 2025, the Houthi rebels attacked over 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two ships and causing the deaths of four sailors.
In 2024, the United States launched strikes against the Houthis, which concluded weeks later.
Mohammed Mansour, the Houthis’ deputy information minister, stated on Saturday that the group is “conducting this battle in stages, and closing the Bab al-Mandeb strait is among our options.”
A potential naval blockade on Israel-linked ships passing through the Bab al-Mandeb strait could harm Israel’s economy, as roughly 30 percent of its imports travel through the Red Sea waterway, according to Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry, reporting from Sanaa.
The involvement of the Houthis in the conflict could complicate the deployment of the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier, which is currently in port in Crete for repairs. Sending the carrier back into the Red Sea could result in a similar level of attacks experienced by the USS Dwight D Eisenhower in 2024 and the USS Harry S Truman in 2025 during the American campaign against the Houthis.
‘Significant’ Strike
Mohamad Elmasry, a professor of Media Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, described the Houthis’ entry into the conflict as “very significant.”
“We have seen over the past two and a half years that Houthis have significant power,” Elmasry said.
“If they decided to move to shut down Bab al-Mandeb strait, the Red Sea and, ultimately, the Suez Canal, then we would have two major choke points [closed] along with the Strait of Hormuz,” he explained. “These are major international shipping waterways for international trade, so I think it can be very significant from that standpoint.”
Ibrahim Jalal, a senior researcher on Yemen and the Gulf, said the threat to shipping around Yemen is “very alarming especially when it’s compounded by a coordinated multi-strait blockade.”
“This is exactly the theatre that Iran has been preparing for from what we have seen in the past few years with the Houthis,” he added.
Reporting from the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said the opening of a new front in the war, alongside fighting in Iran and Hezbollah, is likely to raise questions in Israel “on the viability of the operations and the way the government is conducting its war.”
“We are expecting Israel to retaliate to this attack as we have seen them do time and again when Yemen joined the battle during the war in Gaza as a way to support the Palestinians,” she said.
Meanwhile, nine Israeli soldiers were wounded in two rocket attacks from southern Lebanon, Israeli Army Radio reported on Saturday.
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