Yemen’s Houthis have claimed responsibility for an attack in southern Israel on Saturday morning. The Ballistic missile attack, a first by Iran’s allies in the country since the start of the war, triggered sirens in Beersheba and surrounding areas.
The group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they targeted sensitive Israeli military sites with a barrage of ballistic missiles in response to the targeting of Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories.
A military spokesman for the Houthis, Brigadier-General Yahya Saree, announced the attack on Saturday on the rebels’ Al-Masirah satellite television. He said that the attacks “will continue until the declared objectives are achieved, as stated in the previous statement by the armed forces, and until the aggression against all fronts of the resistance ceases.” The group has held Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since 2014.
The IDF meanwhile said that it intercepted one missile.
The attack came just hours after the rebel group said that it would join the war.
The Houthis had stayed out of the recent Iran war.
From November 2023 until January 2025, the group had attacked more than 100 merchant vessels with drones and missiles, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. They stopped the attack after the US brokered a ceasefire between the Israel and Hamas in October 2025
The group's involvement now raises the prospects of a wider regional conflict.
Mohamad Elmasry, a professor of Media Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, who spoke to Al Jazeera, said the Houthis entering the US-Israeli war on Iran as “very significant”.
“If they decided to move to shut down Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Red Sea and, ultimately, the Suez Canal, then we would have two major choke points [shut down] along with the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “These are major international shipping waterways for international trade, so I think it can be very significant from that standpoint.”
The Houthis also sit on another important international trade route. Chatham House research fellow Farea Al-Muslimi told the BBC. On whether the Houthis will disrupt another trade route, Al Muslimi said: “It’s a nightmare. We already have a nightmare, and this would make it worse of a nightmare”.
