Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to “destroy the infrastructure” of Yemen’s Houthi militants, he told parliament on Monday. The Houthis struck Tel Aviv with a ballistic missile on Friday.
“I have instructed our forces to destroy the infrastructure of the Houthis because anyone who tries to harm us will be struck with full force. We will continue to crush the forces of evil with strength and ingenuity, even if it takes time,” Netanyahu said in a speech to lawmakers.
Two days earlier, Yemen’s Houthi movement claimed responsibility for a ballistic missile attack on what they called a military target in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv. The missile “struck its target accurately and the defenses and interception systems failed to intercept it,” the Houthis said in a statement.
The missile attack was the latest in a series of tit-for-tat exchanges between the militants and the IDF. Less than a day beforehand, Israeli warplanes attacked ports and power infrastructure in Yemen, in response to a Houthi missile attack that set off air raid sirens across Israel before the projectile was intercepted.
The IDF claimed that the infrastructure targeted was of military value to the Houthis, while the militants described it as civilian in nature. The Houthis claimed that nine people were killed in the Israeli airstrikes.
In the aftermath of Friday’s attack on Jaffa, American and British jets conducted a wave of bombing raids across Yemen. Amid the attacks, the US Navy inadvertently shot down one of its own F/A-18 fighter jets in a friendly-fire incident over the Red Sea, the Pentagon announced on Sunday.
The Houthis disputed the Pentagon’s story, claiming that one of their missiles downed the American jet.
Officially known as the Ansar Allah movement, the Houthis emerged as the dominant military faction in Yemen during the latter years of the country’s ongoing civil war. When Israel declared war on Hamas and began bombing Gaza last October, the Houthis began launching attacks on Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea, in a bid to enforce a naval blockade of the Jewish state.
The US and UK have been conducting airstrikes against the Houthis for months in an effort to break the blockade.
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