Israel directly threatened Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, leader of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on Friday, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pounded Yemeni ports in response to missile attacks this week.
The Times of Israel reported:
“As we said, if the Houthis continue to fire missiles on Israel, they will suffer painful blows, and we will also strike the heads of terror just as we did to Deif and the Sinwars in Gaza, to Nasrallah in Beirut and Haniyeh in Tehran,” he says, referring to the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah Israel has assassinated and attempted to kill.
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“We will hunt down and eliminate Abdul-Malik al-Houthi in Yemen as well. We will defend ourselves by our own strength against any enemy,” Katz adds.
The IDF described the Israeli strikes in a statement:
A short while ago, the IDF struck and dismantled terrorist infrastructure sites belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime in the Hudaydah and Salif Ports in Yemen.
These ports are used to transfer weapons and are a further example of the Houthi terrorist regime’s systematic and cynical exploitation of civilian infrastructure in order to advance terrorist activities.
The strikes were conducted after numerous advanced warnings issued by the IDF to the population in the area in order to mitigate the risk of harm to civilian population in the areas of these sites. Any hostile activity in these ports will continue to be prevented.
Over the past year and a half, the Houthi terrorist regime has been operating under Iranian direction and funding in order to harm the State of Israel and its allies, undermining regional stability and disrupting global freedom of navigation.
In light of the Houthi terrorist regime’s use of these ports for terrorist activity, the IDF continues to warn individuals in the area of the ports to evacuate.
The IDF is determined to continue to operate against threats posed to Israeli civilians, at any distance required.
The airstrikes came just hours after President Donald Trump left the region. Trump announced a ceasefire between the U.S. and the Houthis, but the Houthis said they would continue attacking Israel, which they did.
Israel made clear retained freedom of action and was not bound by the U.S. ceasefire — hence Friday’s attack.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
