SANAA, June 8: Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels announced a missile attack on Israel on Monday and declared a ban on Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea, thereby raising concerns of returning to a major disruption on the key route.
Brigadier-General Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, said the missile barrage targeted the “occupied Yaffa region” and “Tel Aviv” and also claimed to have achieved its objectives with precision.
In a declaration issued from Sana’a, Saree affirmed three key positions, including “a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea; all enemy movements will be considered legitimate military targets for Yemeni forces.”
“Will respond to escalation with escalation, and its military operations will intensify in accordance with field developments, the battle, and in conjunction with the axis of jihad and resistance,” he added.
Saree affirmed the right of the Yemeni people and the peoples of the free nation to confront American-Israeli aggression.
The announcement came as part of a broader confrontation against what Yemen described as “American and Zionist aggression” against the axis of resistance in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
He said that the missile attack was carried out in rejection of the “Zionist project seeking to establish” what is called “Greater Israel” under the name of a “New Middle East”, Press TV and Tasmin News Agency reported.
It also aimed to break what Saree described as the “unjust and oppressive siege imposed by the American enemy” on the people of Yemen and the free nations of the axis in Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran, Iranian state media reported.
Reaffirming coordination with aligned regional groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and armed factions in Palestine and Iraq, Saree said, “We will respond to escalation with escalation,” in direct response to Israeli aggression against Lebanon, Iran, and Gaza,” the Iranian state media reported.
Houthis, in the past Israel-Hamas war, harassed cargo ships in the vital seaway that compelled several companies into a lengthy detour around the tip of southern Africa.
(UNI)
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