The Israeli military claimed responsibility for a series of airstrikes in Yemen on Thursday that hit Sana’a International Airport and other targets in the Houthi-controlled capital.

The Israel Defense Forces said the strikes targeted military infrastructure used by the Houthis to conduct acts of terrorism. 

“The Houthi terrorist regime has repeatedly attacked the State of Israel and its citizens, including in UAV and surface-to-surface missile attacks on Israeli territory,” the IDF said in a statement. 

“The targets that were struck by the IDF include military infrastructure used by the Houthi terrorist regime for its military activities in both the Sana’a International Airport and the Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations. In addition, the IDF struck military infrastructure in the Al-Hudaydah, Salif, and Ras Kanatib ports on the western coast.” 

PROJECTILE FROM YEMEN STRIKES NEAR TEL AVIV, INJURING MORE THAN A DOZEN: OFFICIALS

The strikes come days after Israel’s defense minister promised retaliation against Houthi leaders for missile strikes launched at Israel from Yemen.

Houthi rebels, who control most of northern Yemen, have fired upon Israel for more than a year to support Hamas terrorists at war with the Jewish State. The Houthis have attempted to enforce an embargo on Israel by launching missiles and drones at cargo vessels crossing the Red Sea – a major shipping lane for international trade. 

US NAVY SHIPS REPEL ATTACK FROM HOUTHIS IN GULF OF ADEN

This photo released by the European Union’s Operation Aspides naval force shows the oil tanker Sounion burning in the Red Sea following a series of attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, on Saturday Sept. 14, 2024.  (European Union’s Operation Aspides via AP)

Overall, the Houthis have launched over 200 missiles and 170 drones at Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 people. Since then, the Houthis have also attacked more than six dozen commercial vessels – particularly in the Bab-el-Mandeb, the southern maritime gateway to Egypt’s Suez Canal.

On Saturday, a projectile launched into Israel from Yemen struck Tel Aviv and caused mild injuries to 16 people, Israeli officials said. The incident was a rare occasion where Israeli defense systems failed to intercept an attack.

NETANYAHU WARNS HOUTHIS AMID CALLS FOR ISREAL TO WIPE OUT TERROR LEADERSHIP AS IT DID WITH NASRALLAH, SINWAR

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, November 7, 2024.  (REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)

Israel retaliated by striking multiple targets in areas of Yemen under Houthi control, including power plants in Sana’a. 

Israeli leaders have vowed to eliminate Houthi leadership if the missile and drone attacks do not cease.

On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “We will strike their strategic infrastructure and decapitate their leaders. Just as we did to [former Hamas chief Ismail] Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah, in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon – we will do in Hodeidah and Sanaa.” 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also urged Israelis to be “patient” and suggested that soon the military will ramp up its campaign against the Houthis.

“We will take forceful, determined and sophisticated action. Even if it takes time, the result will be the same,” he said. “Just as we have acted forcefully against the terror arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so too will we act against the Houthis.”

Fox News Digital’s Amelie Botbol contributed to this report. 

United States President Joe Biden’s administration is facing criticism after a US-backed report on famine in the Gaza Strip was retracted this week, drawing accusations of political interference and pro-Israel bias.

The report by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which provides information about global food insecurity, had warned that a “famine scenario” was unfolding in northern Gaza during Israel’s war on the territory.

A note on the FEWS NET website, viewed by Al Jazeera on Thursday, said the group’s “December 23 Alert is under further review and is expected to be re-released with updated data and analysis in January”.

The Associated Press news agency, quoting unnamed American officials, said the US asked for the report to be retracted. FEWS NET is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on Thursday afternoon.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians since early October 2023 and plunged the coastal enclave into a dire humanitarian crisis as access to food, water, medicine and other supplies is severely curtailed.

An Israeli military offensive in the northern part of the territory has drawn particular concern in recent months with experts warning in November of a “strong likelihood” that famine was imminent in the area.

“Starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing” in northern Gaza, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said in an alert on November 8.

“Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future,” it said.

The report

The FEWS NET report dated December 23 noted that Israel has maintained a “near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies to besieged areas” of northern Gaza for nearly 80 days.

That includes the Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoon areas, where rights groups have estimated thousands of Palestinians are trapped.

“Based on the collapse of the food system and worsening access to water, sanitation, and health services in these areas … it is highly likely that the food consumption and acute malnutrition thresholds for Famine (IPC Phase 5) have now been surpassed in North Gaza Governorate,” the FEWS NET report had said.

The network added that without a change to Israeli policy on food supplies entering the area, it expected that two to 15 people would die per day from January to March at least, which would surpass the “famine threshold”.

The report had spurred public criticism from the US ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, who in a statement on Tuesday said FEWS NET had relied on “outdated and inaccurate” data.

Lew disputed the number of civilians believed to be living in northern Gaza, saying the civilian population was “in the range of 7,000-15,000, not 65,000-75,000 which is the basis of this report”.

“At a time when inaccurate information is causing confusion and accusations, it is irresponsible to issue a report like this,” he said.

pic.twitter.com/f9rxgHdVPm

— Ambassador Jack Lew (@USAmbIsrael) December 24, 2024

‘Bullying’

But Palestinian rights advocates condemned the ambassador’s remarks. Some accused Lew of appearing to welcome the forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.

“To reject a report on starvation in northern Gaza by appearing to boast about the fact that it has been successfully ethnically cleansed of its native population is just the latest example of Biden administration officials supporting, enabling and excusing Israel’s clear and open campaign of genocide in Gaza,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement.

The group urged FEWS NET “not to submit to the bullying of genocide supporters”.

Huwaida Arraf, a prominent Palestinian American human rights lawyer, also criticised Lew for “relying on Israeli sources instead of your own experts”.

“Do you work for Israel or the American people, the overwhelming majority of whom disapprove of US support for this genocide?” she wrote on X.

Polls over the past year have shown a high percentage of Americans are opposed to Israel’s offensive in Gaza and want an end to the war.

A March survey by Gallup found that 55 percent of people in the US disapproved of Israel’s actions in Gaza while a more recent poll by the Pew Research Center, released in October, suggested about three in 10 Americans believed Israel’s military offensive is “going too far”.

While the Biden administration has said it is pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza, it has rebuffed calls to condition US assistance to Israel as a way to bring the war to an end.

Washington gives its ally at least $3.8bn in military assistance annually, and researchers at Brown University recently estimated that the Biden administration provided an additional $17.9bn to Israel since the start of the Gaza war.

The US is required under its own laws to suspend military assistance to a country if that country restricts the delivery of American-backed humanitarian aid, but Biden’s administration has so far refused to apply that rule to Israel.

“We, at this time, have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law,” Department of State spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters in November despite the reports of “imminent” famine in northern Gaza.

An investigation by The New York Times has found that Israel, in the weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, severely undermined its system of safeguards to make it easier to strike Gaza, and used flawed methods to find targets and assess the risk to civilians.

The Israeli military acknowledged changes to its rules of engagement but said they were made in the context of an unprecedented military threat and always complied with the laws of war.

Here are some of the main takeaways from the investigation.

Raised threshold of civilian harm per pre-emptive strike

In previous conflicts with Hamas, Israeli officers were usually only allowed to endanger fewer than 10 civilians in a given strike. In many cases the limit was five, or even zero.

At the start of this war, the Israeli military increased that threshold to 20, before reducing it in certain contexts a month later. Strikes that could harm more than 100 civilians would also be permitted on a case-by-case basis.

Expanded list of targets

Israel vastly increased the number of military targets that it proactively sought to strike. Officers could now pursue not only the smaller pool of senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also thousands of low-ranking fighters as well as those indirectly involved in military matters.

Removed limits on how many civilians could be put at risk each day

The military leadership briefly ordered that its forces could cumulatively risk killing up to 500 civilians a day in preplanned strikes. Two days later, even this limit was lifted, allowing officers to conduct as many strikes as they deemed lawful.

Struck too fast to vet all targets properly

The pace of the bombing campaign was one of the most intense in 21st-century warfare, which officers said made it far harder to vet targets properly. Israel dropped or fired nearly 30,000 munitions into Gaza in the first seven weeks, at least 30 times more than the U.S.-led coalition fired in the first seven weeks of its bombing campaign against ISIS.

Used a simplistic risk assessment

Israel often used a simplistic statistical model to assess the risk of civilian harm: It regularly estimated the number of civilians in a building where a target was believed to be hiding by using a formula based largely on the level of cellphone usage in the surrounding neighborhood.

Dropped large, inaccurate bombs

In previous wars, the air force would often use a “roof knock,” a smaller munition to give civilians some time to flee an imminent attack. From the first day of this war, Israel significantly reduced its use of roof knocks. The military also sometimes used less-accurate “dumb bombs,” as well as 2,000-pound bombs.

Used AI to propose targets

Israel used an artificial intelligence system in a widespread way for the first time. It helped officers analyze and sign off on targets exponentially more quickly, increasing the number of targets that officers could propose each day.

Delayed strikes

Hours often passed between when an officer vetted a target and when the air force launched a strike at him. This meant strikes often relied on outdated intelligence.