Israel launches fresh airstrikes at Houthi targets in Yemen

Israel launched a wave of airstrikes at Houthi targets in Yemen on Sunday, while continuing to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, expanding an assault on Iran-backed proxies across the Middle East that risks accelerating a slide towards a potentially devastating regional conflict on multiple fronts.

The attack on the port of Hodeidah in Yemen involved dozens of Israeli planes and appears to have targeted fuel facilities, power plants and docks at the Ras Issa and Hodeidah ports, and is one of the single biggest such operations yet seen in the near year-long crisis in the region.

Israeli military officials said the raid targeted the Houthis, an armed Iran-backed group that control most of Yemen. The Houthis have fired at Israeli targets for months in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. They have also targeted international shipping in the Red Sea. On Saturday, the Houthis launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel’s main international airport when Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was arriving.

The sites targeted on Sunday were used by the Houthis, who seized the Yemeni capital Sana’a in 2014, to “transfer Iranian weaponry to the region and supplies for military needs”, the Israeli military said in a statement.

“Over the past year, the Houthis have been operating under the direction and funding of Iran, and in cooperation with Iraqi militias in order to attack the State of Israel, undermine regional stability and disrupt global freedom of navigation,” the military said.

Residents said the Israeli strikes caused power outages in most parts of Hodeidah.

The strikes in Yemen and the new wave of attacks in Lebanon came 48 hours after the Israeli operation that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran leader of Hezbollah, in Beirut.

Since Nasrallah’s death, Hezbollah, which is also backed by Iran, has said it will continue fighting Israel and has continued to fire rockets at it, including a salvo on Sunday morning.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel stepped up its bombardment of Hezbollah strongholds last Monday, according to health ministry figures. An Israeli attack on Sunday on the city of Ain Deleb in southern Lebanon killed 24 people and wounded 29 others, according to a preliminary toll, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement.

Israel’s military said the air force had struck dozens of targets including launchers and weapons stores while its navy said it had intercepted eight projectiles coming from the direction of Lebanon.

The strikes were concentrated in the south of Lebanon, where tit for tat exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah have been conducted for almost a year.

Drones could be heard flying over all parts of the Lebanese capital overnight and throughout the day on Sunday.

In Beirut, displaced families spent the night on benches at Zaitunay Bay, a string of restaurants and cafes on Beirut’s waterfront where private security usually shoos away any loiterers.

The UN’s high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi, said “well over 200,000 people are displaced inside Lebanon” and more than 50,000 had fled to neighbouring Syria.

Reports in the Israeli media suggested that the leadership of the IDF was continuing to push for a limited ground offensive within weeks, seeing a closing window of opportunity.

Netanyahu said on Saturday that Nasrallah’s killing was a necessary step toward “changing the balance of power in the region for years to come”. He added: “Nasrallah was not a terrorist, he was the terrorist,” warning of challenging days ahead.

An international diplomatic push for a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel has made little progress though Lebanon’s information minister, Ziad Makary, said during a cabinet meeting on Sunday that efforts were still under way.

The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said on Sunday that Israel would not be able to safely get people back into their homes in the north of the country by waging an all-out war with Hezbollah or Iran.

Israel’s stated goal for its campaign in Lebanon is to make its northern areas safe from Hezbollah rocket fire and allow more than 60,000 displaced people to return.

“An all-out war with Hezbollah, certainly with Iran, is not the way to do that. If you want to get those folks back home safely and sustainably, we believe that a diplomatic path is the right course,” Kirby told CNN.

The assassination of Nasrallah dealt a major blow to Hezbollah and to Iran, removing an influential ally who helped build the Shia Muslim militant organisation into the linchpin of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance”, the loose network of anti-Israeli, pro-Iranian armed groups across the Middle East which includes the Houthis as well as Hamas.

European foreign ministers have stepped up their calls for a ceasefire, amid concern that the killing of Nasrallah risks seriously destabilising Lebanon and the region.

Israel must “immediately stop its strikes in Lebanon”, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said, adding that his country was opposed to any form of ground operation by the Israelis.

David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, said on X that he had spoken to the Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati. “We agreed on the need for an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the bloodshed. A diplomatic solution is the only way to restore security and stability for the Lebanese and Israeli people,” Lammy wrote.

Asked on Sunday about Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, Pope Francis criticised military attacks that he said go “beyond morality”. “Even in war there is a morality to safeguard,” the pontiff said. “War is immoral. But the rules of war give it some morality.”

Nasrallah’s body was recovered intact from the site of Friday’s strike, a medical source and a security source told Reuters on Sunday. Hezbollah has not yet said when his funeral will be held.

Supporters of the group and other Lebanese people who hailed its role in fighting Israel, which occupied south Lebanon for years, mourned him on Sunday.

“We lost the leader who gave us all the strength and faith that we, this small country that we love, could turn it into a paradise,” said a Lebanese Christian woman, Sophia Blanche Rouillard, carrying a black flag to work in Beirut.

The fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, their latest round of warfare in four decades of on-off conflict, has been waged in parallel with Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas which began after the Iran-backed Palestinian group’s attack against Israel on 7 Oct 2023.

Nasrallah’s death capped a devastating fortnight for Hezbollah, starting with the detonation of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members. The attack, blamed on Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, killed 42 and injured several thousand, mostly Hezbollah members.

Israeli airstrikes across Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon, the Bekaa valley near the Syrian border and in Beirut’s southern suburbs have meanwhile killed a string of the group’s other most senior commanders.

The Israeli military said on Sunday it had killed Nabil Kaouk, the deputy chairman of Hezbollah’s executive council, in a strike on Saturday. Hezbollah confirmed his death, bringing the total of senior Hezbollah leaders who have died in Israeli strikes in the last 10 days to seven overall. They include at least three founding members who had evaded death or detention for decades.