ShareGAZA/SANAA: Zionist air strikes pummeled Sanaa’s international airport and other targets in Yemen on Thursday, a day after the latest attacks on the Zionist entity by Houthi rebels. The strikes targeting the airport, military facilities and power stations followed rising hostilities between the Zionist entity and the Houthis. Three people were killed and 14 were left wounded or missing after the Zionist attacks.
The head of the World Health Organization, who was at Sanaa airport amid Zionist bombardment, said there was damage to infrastructure but he remained safe. “One of our plane’s crewmembers was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X, adding that other UN staff were also safe but their departure was delayed until repairs could be made.
The rebel-held capital’s airport was struck by “more than six” attacks with raids also targeting the adjacent Al-Dailami air base, a witness told AFP. A series of strikes were also fired at a power station in Hodeida, a witness and the Iran-backed Houthis’ official Al-Masirah TV station said.
Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam called the strikes, which came a day after the Houthis fired a missile and two drones at the Zionist entity, “a Zionist crime against all the Yemeni people”.
Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that his country’s strikes on Houthi rebels would continue “until the job is done”. The Zionist military said targets included “military infrastructure” at the airport and power stations in Sanaa and Hodeida, as well as other facilities at Hodeida, Salif and Ras Kanatib ports.
In Gaza, a Palestinian TV channel affiliated said five of its journalists were killed Thursday in a Zionist strike on their vehicle. A missile hit the journalists’ broadcast truck as it was parked in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to a statement from their employer, Al-Quds Today. The channel is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, whose militants have fought alongside Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The station identified the five staffers as Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Ayman Al-Jadi, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed Al-Ladaa.
They were killed “while performing their journalistic and humanitarian duty”, the statement said. “We affirm our commitment to continue our resistant media message,” it added. In a statement naming the five killed, the Zionist military claimed intelligence had “confirmed that these individuals were Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists”.
According to witnesses in Nuseirat, a missile fired by a Zionist aircraft hit the broadcast vehicle, which was parked outside Al-Awda Hospital, setting the vehicle on fire and killing those inside. The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East arm said the organization was “devastated by the reports that five journalists and media workers were killed inside their broadcasting vehicle by a (Zionist) strike”. “Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” it added in a statement on social media.
Video from the scene of Thursday’s attack showed the twisted wreckage of a white van with what appeared to be the remnants of the word “PRESS” in red on the back doors. Later on Thursday, dozens of relatives and fellow journalists took part in the funerals of the five journalists, whose bodies were wrapped in white shrouds. Blue flak jackets bearing the word “PRESS” were placed on top of the shrouded bodies. Women wept besides the bodies as men performed special prayers before burials.
Medics said the five were among at least 26 people killed in Zionist air assaults across the Palestinian enclave before dawn. They said 13 other people were killed and 25 wounded in a Zionist airstrike on a house in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. The death toll could rise as many people were trapped under the rubble, they added. In Gaza City, a Zionist strike on a house in the suburb of Sabra killed eight more people, medics said, bringing Thursday’s death toll to 26. The Zionist military said a 35-year-old soldier was killed in the central Gaza Strip.
The chief pediatric doctor at a southern Gaza hospital told AFP that three babies had died of “severe temperature drop” this week, as the war-ravaged Palestinian territory grapples with winter cold. In the most recent case, Dr Ahmed al-Farra of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis city said a three-week-old girl “was brought to the emergency room with a severe temperature drop, which led to her death”.
Farra, the head of the hospital’s pediatric services, mentioned two other cases his team handled on Tuesday. “A three-day-old baby and another baby, less than a month old, both died after a severe temperature drop,” he said. “This is due to the fact that they live in tents,” added the doctor, referring to Palestinians displaced by the more than 14-month war in Gaza who have sought shelter in makeshift camps, many in the coastal Khan Yunis area.
“The tents do not protect from the cold, and it gets very cold at night, with no way to keep warm,” said Farra. The risk to newborns is particularly acute, he added, as many mothers suffer malnutrition affecting the quality of the milk their babies feed on. The deceased three-week-old girl, Sila Al-Faseeh, lived in the Al-Mawasi tent city, on the Mediterranean coast near Khan Yunis.
Her father, Mahmoud Al-Faseeh, told AFP that in her final hours, “the little girl woke up two or three times during the night to breastfeed”. In the morning, the parents saw “she had bitten her tongue and was bleeding”, said the father. “We took her to the doctor, who told us it was due to the cold, and there have been several cases with similar symptoms.” Faseeh said it was “extremely cold, and the tent is not suitable for living. The children are always sick.”
Zionist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Thursday, triggering angry reactions from the Palestinian Authority and Jordan accusing the far-right politician of a deliberate provocation. “I went up to the site of our temple this morning to pray for the peace of our soldiers, the swift return of all hostages and a total victory, God willing,” Ben Gvir said in a message on social media platform X.
He also posted a photo of himself on the holy site, with members of the Zionist security forces and the famed golden Dome of the Rock in the background. The Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem’s Old City is Islam’s third-holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian national identity.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it “condemns” Ben Gvir’s latest visit, calling his prayer at the site a “provocation to millions of Palestinians and Muslims”. Jordan, which administers the mosque compound, similarly condemned what its foreign ministry called Ben Gvir’s “provocative and unacceptable” actions. The ministry’s statement decried a “violation of the historical and legal status quo”. The office of Netanyahu said in a brief statement that “the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed”. – Agencies
