A huge fire broke out after violent Israeli airstrikes on the city of Hodeidah, western Yemen (photos)

Yemen – Israeli warplanes launched violent air strikes yesterday, Saturday, targeting the city of Hodeidah in western Yemen.

As a result, a huge fire broke out following violent Israeli raids on the city.

The Hebrew newspaper “Walla” quoted an American official as saying that Israel launched raids on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

Yemeni media reported on Saturday evening that a series of large explosions were heard in the coastal city of Hodeidah on the Red Sea, west of Yemen.

Axios website quoted an American official as saying that “Israeli aircraft carried out a raid in Yemen in response to the Houthi drone raid on Tel Aviv.”

For its part, Al-Yemen TV channel said that the raids on the city of Hodeidah targeted oil storage facilities in the city’s port, which resulted in a huge fire breaking out there.

Israel had threatened to respond to a drone attack on Tel Aviv, for which the Houthis claimed responsibility, in a development that portends a further expansion of the nine-month-old war in Gaza, as well as the conflict on its margins between the Hebrew state and Iran’s arms in the region.

The Houthi movement issued a statement about the operation, announcing that the Yemeni Armed Forces’ drone air force had carried out a qualitative military operation targeting an important target in the Jaffa area.

The Houthis explained that the operation was carried out “with a new drone called ‘Yaffa’, which is capable of bypassing the enemy’s interception systems and cannot be detected by radars, and the operation successfully achieved its goals.”

The group confirmed that it has a “target bank” in Israel.

Tensions have been rising in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden since the Houthi group began launching attacks last November on ships it says are linked to Israel or heading to its ports in response to the Israeli war on Gaza.

For its part, the United States and Britain launched a military operation against the Houthis on January 12 and carried out extensive attacks on their sites in several Yemeni cities, against the backdrop of the group’s attacks in the Red and Arabian Seas, before the group expanded the scope of targeting to include American and British ships in response to the airstrikes.

Source: RT