Yemen's Houthis say chief of staff Muhammad Al Ghamari is dead

Israel claims military commander died of wounds from strike on Sanaa in August

Houthi fighters have been staging attacks on Israel and on ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. EPA

Yemen's Houthis said on Thursday their military chief of staff Muhammad Abdel Kareem Al Ghamari had been killed "while fulfilling his duties".

The group's military spokesman Yahya Saree did not say when or how Mr Al Ghamari was killed.

Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz, though, claimed Mr Al Ghamari had died of his wounds "in the powerful 'strike on the firstborns' in which most of the Houthi leadership in Yemen was eliminated".

He was referring to an Israeli attack on Sanaa on August 28, in which Houthi prime minister Ahmed Ghaleb Al Rahwi, nine ministers and two cabinet officials were killed as they attended a government meeting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "Another chief-of-staff in the line of terror chiefs who aimed to harm us was eliminated. We will reach all of them.

"The resolute hand of the State of Israel will reach everyone who aims to harm us and who sets their goal on destroying Israel," he said.

The chief of staff had initially appeared to survive the attack, as Houthi media quoted him issuing a vow of retaliation two days later.

Mr Saree said only that Mr Al Ghamari has been killed "in the course of his [work] and the fulfilment of his religious duty", along with some of his companions and his 13-year-old son Hussein.

He said Israeli and US attacks on Yemen had killed many people, including Mr Al Ghamari, "over the past two years", the period of the Gaza war, during which the Houthis have staged attacks in the name of the Palestinian cause.

"The rounds of conflict with the enemy have not ended and the Zionist enemy will receive its punishment for the crimes it has committed," he said.

The Houthis, part of Iran's axis of resistance of anti-Israel groups, have been firing missiles and drones at Israel and international ships since November 2023, claiming they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Israel has carried out several rounds of retaliatory strikes on Yemeni ports, power stations and the international airport in Sanaa.

The killings of the prime minister and cabinet were the highest-profile assassinations to be announced in months of attacks by Israel, as the two sides traded fire over the Gaza war.

Mr Katz said: "We have acted extensively against the Houthis to remove significant threats – and so it will be done against every threat in the future as well."

Yemen has been split between a Houthi administration in Sanaa and a Saudi-backed government in Aden since the Iran-aligned group seized the capital in late 2014, starting a decade-long conflict.