Houthis confirm their prime minister killed in Israeli strike

Yemen’s Houthi rebel movement has confirmed that its self-proclaimed Prime Minister Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi was killed in an Israeli air strike earlier this week.

The Iran-backed group said several other senior officials were killed when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) targeted Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, on Thursday.

The IDF said Rahawi and other senior Houthi officials were “eliminated” when Israeli fighter jets struck a gathering in the Sanaa area.

The Houthis have controlled much of north-western Yemen since 2014, after ousting the internationally recognised government from Sanaa and triggering a devastating civil war.

The Houthis said Rahawi had been killed alongside several Houthi ministers, though it did not name the others.

Saudi Arabian news site al-Hadath reports the Houthis’ foreign minister, as well as the ministers for justice, youth and sports, social affairs and labour, were killed.

The office of Mahdi al-Mashat, the Houthis’ president, said that several other ministers “sustained moderate and serious injuries” as a result of the strike.

It added that Muhammad Ahmed Miftah, the Houthi deputy prime minister, would assume Rahawi’s role.

Rahawi had held his post since August 2024, and was largely seen as a figurehead of the movement instead of being part of the top decision-making circle that plans military operations.

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the movement’s ultimate leader, as well as the group’s defence minister and the chief of staff, were not said to be among the casualties in Thursday’s attack.

The IDF said in a statement late on Saturday that it had carried out the strike “within a few hours” of receiving intelligence concerning the gathering.

It said it was still assessing the operation’s full impact.

Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis have regularly launched missiles at Israel and targeted commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Israel has, in turn, carried out air strikes on targets in Houthi-held parts of Yemen, with the stated aim of curtailing Houthi attacks.

Last week, Israel said it had hit Houthi targets in Sanaa, in response to the movement’s missile attack which Israel said carried cluster munitions.