Houthi prime minister killed in Israeli airstrike in Yemen, rebels say
Ahmad al-Rahwi was killed along with several ministers gathered for a pre-recorded speech by the rebel group’s leader.

The Houthis have said the prime minister of the Houthi-controlled government was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Ahmad al-Rahwi was killed along with several ministers in an attack in Sanaa on Thursday, the rebels said in a statement on Saturday. Other ministers and officials were injured, the statement said, without giving further details.

Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the group’s Supreme Political Council, said: “We promise to God, to the beloved Yemeni people and to the families of the martyrs and the wounded that we will take revenge.”

He warned foreign companies to leave Israel “before it is too late”.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that the attack was a “crushing blow” against the Houthis, adding that “this is only the beginning.”

Israel said on Friday that the airstrike targeted the Iran-allied group’s chief of staff, defense minister and other senior officials, and that it was confirming the results.

The Houthi statement said the prime minister was targeted along with other members of his Houthi-controlled government during “a regular workshop held by the government to evaluate its activities and performance over the past year.”

The Israeli attack on Thursday came as a rebel-owned television station was broadcasting a speech by the rebel group’s secretive leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, in which he shared updates on the latest developments in Gaza and vowed retaliation against Israel. Senior Houthi officials used to gather to watch al-Houthi’s pre-recorded speeches.

Three tribal leaders told The Associated Press that the attack that killed the prime minister targeted a meeting of Houthi leaders at a villa in Beit Baws, an ancient village in southern Sanaa. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions.

“Yemen suffers a lot for the victory of the Palestinian people,” al-Rahwi said last week after Israeli attacks on an oil facility and a power plant owned by the country’s main oil company, which is controlled by the rebels in Sanaa.

On August 22, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile toward Israel, which its military described as the first cluster bomb fired by the rebels since 2023.

The prime minister was from the southern province of Abyan and an ally of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. He allied himself with the Houthis in 2014 when rebels seized Sanaa and much of the country’s north and centre, triggering the country’s long-running civil war. He was appointed prime minister in August 2024.

Al-Rahwi is the most senior Houthi official to be killed since the US and Israel launched an air and naval campaign in response to rebel missile and drone attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea. Dozens of people have been killed in the US and Israeli attacks. A US strike in April targeted a prison holding African migrants in the northern Saada province, killing at least 68 people and wounding 47 others.

Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst at Brussels-based thinktank Crisis Group International, described the killing of the Houthi prime minister as a “serious setback” for the rebels.

He said the escalation was a sign of Israel’s move from attacking the rebels’ infrastructure to targeting their leaders, including senior military officials, which “poses a major threat to their command structure”.

The Houthis began a campaign of targeting ships in response to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, saying they were doing so to show solidarity with the Palestinians. Their attacks over the past two years have devastated vessels in the Red Sea, through which about $1 trillion worth of goods pass each year.

In May, the Trump administration announced a deal with the Houthis to halt airstrikes in exchange for a halt to attacks on ships. However, the rebels said the deal did not include a halt to attacks on targets they believed to be affiliated with Israel.