The missile attack by the Iranian-backed rebels was their first action in the Iran war.
Houthi supporters shout slogans during a rally against Israel and the United States' war on Iran, in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, March 13, 2026. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iranian-backed Houthi rebels said they were responsible for a missile launch toward Israel early Saturday, their first since the war in the Middle East started.
The Israeli military said it intercepted the projectile. erupted after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, which retaliated with strikes against Israel and neighboring Gulf Arab states. The conflict has upended global air travel, disrupted oil exports and caused fuel prices to soar. Iran’s stranglehold on the Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities hours after threatening to “escalate and expand” its campaign against Tehran on Friday. Iran vowed to retaliate. Israeli airstrikes continued Saturday. Associated Press footage showed smoke rising from northeastern Tehran. Iran sent missiles toward Israel with loud booms heard in Jerusalem.Houthi Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said on the rebels’ Al-Masirah satellite television station Saturday that the Houthis launched a barrage of ballistic missiles toward what he described as “sensitive Israeli military sites” in southern Israel. The attack came hours after Saree signaled in a vague statement Friday that the rebels would join the war.Sirens went off around Israel’s southern city of Beer Sheba and near Israel’s main nuclear research center as Iran and Hezbollah fired on Israel overnight. Explosions filled the air in Tel Aviv, where Israel’s Fire and Rescue Service said it responded to 11 impact sites. If the Houthis decide to ramp-up attacks on commercial shipping, as they have in the past, it could have a devastating effect on global trade. If they target vessels in the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the Red Sea, it would further push up oil prices and destabilize “all of maritime security,” said Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst at the International Crisis Group, a research institution. “The impact would not be limited to the energy market.” As Iran strangles the Strait of Hormuz, countries have scrambled for alternative routes. Bab el-Mandeb, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is crucial as it controls traffic for vessels heading to the Suez Canal through the Red Sea. To get around the Strait of Hormuz closure, Saudi Arabia is sending millions of barrels of crude oil a day through the chokepoint.About 12% of the world’s trade typically passes through Bab el-Mandeb and about 10% of global maritime trade — including 40% of container ship traffic — passes through the Suez Canal each year.The Houthis’ involvement would complicate the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the aircraft carrier that sailed to Crete for repairs then to Split, Croatia, where it arrived on Saturday. Sending the carrier to the Red Sea could draw it into similar attacks as experienced by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in 2024 and the USS Harry S. Truman in the 2025 campaign against the Houthis. have held Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since 2014. Saudi Arabia launched a war against the Houthis on behalf of Yemen’s exiled government in 2015 and the rebels had thus far stayed out of the recent conflict due to their uneasy ceasefire with Saudi Arabia.
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