Yemen's Hodeidah port functioning despite severe damage from Israeli strike

Smoke continues to rise from the terminal days after the attack

Flames and smoke rise from the site of Israeli air strikes at the port of Hodeidah, Yemen. Reuters

Yemen's Red Sea port of Hodeidah was functioning at limited capacity on Tuesday despite significant damage at the site of an Israeli strike, sources and local authorities have said.

Israeli warplanes attacked a fuel depot at the Houthi-controlled port on Saturday, killing nine people and injuring at least 83.

The air raid was in response to a drone attack on Tel Aviv that killed one and injured several others a day earlier.

The strikes on Hodeidah port, the first attack by Israel on Yemen, sparked a raging fire, with one resident telling The National that smoke continued to billow on Tuesday morning.

The Houthi strike on Israel was the farthest by the Yemeni rebels in the conflict. According to an Israeli assessment, the drone travelled 2,600km to its target.

In retaliation, Israel conducted one of its longest aerial missions, a 3,600km round trip, with an unknown amount of time spent over Yemen, a country impoverished and ravaged by a decade-long civil war.

On Tuesday, a Yemeni source told The National that Hodeidah port “suffered significant damage, especially in the area of the port's cranes where five of them are operational and three are damaged”.

The source added that several of the port's warehouses were affected.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) told The National that fires were still burning and “local authorities have advised that the port is functioning at limited capacity”.

“Disruptions to this flow of imports could have dire consequences for Yemen’s population,” Ocha warned.

Despite the damage, the top Houthi official in Hodeida, Muhammad Qahim, said the port had resumed operations “less than 24 hours” after it was struck by Israel.

“More than 80 per cent of the fire has been controlled,” Mr Qahim said a few hours after the attack, adding that the danger to civilians had been reduced.

Funerals were held for victims of the Israeli attack, the Houthi Ministry of Health said.

As well as casualties, the impact of the Israeli strikes" is massive in humanitarian terms", Abdulghani Al Iryani, senior researcher at the Sanaa Centre for Strategic Studies, told The National.

"The Houthis launched the drone from the Island of Kamaran, 60km south of Hodeidah city, north of the port at which Israeli retaliated. The Israeli retaliation disabled the gantry cranes of the port and also destroyed the fuel tanks, so importing fuel will be difficult – and with no fuel, that means no electricity, no clean water, etc."

Vital civilian structures such as schools and hospitals will suffer from the lack of fuel, and the overall obstruction of the influx of aid will hit Yemen's most vulnerable the hardest, Mr Iryani added.

To the contrary, the Israeli strike will strengthen the Houthis, he said.

"Every time economic hardship hits the people, we witness an increase in the recruitment of Houthi fighters so the attack will make it easier and less expensive to recruit more fighters for the war," he said.

Houthis form a heavily armed militia that controls Yemen's capital Sanaa and other regions in the north and west.

The rebels have bolstered their fighting capabilities since the civil war started in the country in 2014 and pose a serious threat to Yemen's neighbours and maritime shipping lanes.

Up until the end of 2018, the Houthis frequently used ballistic missiles they captured from army depots.

However, over the past five years, they have shifted to small, long-range, explosive drones that can evade radar detection.

Most of the group's weapons had been based on Iranian designs or were entirely Iranian in origin.

However, the rebels have reportedly become self-sufficient in developing their weapons and no longer require significant help from Tehran.

As is the case with Hezbollah in Lebanon and other armed groups in Syria and Iraq, the Houthis are part of the Axis of Resistance, an anti-Israel political and military coalition in the Middle East led by Tehran.

Since the Gaza war began in October, the axis has operated under a joint command that has mainly focused on choosing targets linked to Israel, as well as timing attacks, in support of Hamas.

The Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv struck a diplomatic neighbourhood housing the US embassy.

While experts initially deemed it a “lucky” strike among many that failed to reach their targets, sources revealed on Monday that the attack was co-ordinated with regional allies.

On Sunday evening, rebel leader Abdulmalik Al Houthi revealed that Palestinian factions were informed of the “new drone” that hit Tel Aviv, and that its name, Yafa, was chosen by Palestinians.

“It was made in Yemen and launched by Yemenis,” he said.