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 stated that Rahawi and other senior Houthi officials were eliminated during Israeli fighter jets' assault on 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.
While the Houthis reported Rahawi's death and the deaths of numerous other ministers, they did not disclose their names. According to Saudi Arabian news site al-Hadath, high-profile ministers including the foreign minister and those responsible for justice, youth, social affairs, and labor were among those killed.
The Houthi office mentioned that several other ministers suffered moderate to serious injuries in the strike, and that Muhammad Ahmed Miftah, the Houthi deputy prime minister, would step into Rahawi's role.
Rahawi, who had held his position since August 2024, was primarily viewed as a figurehead rather than a key figure in top-level decisions regarding military operations.
Notably, the ultimate leader of the Houthis, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, as well as the defense minister and chief of staff, were not reported among the casualties of Thursday's attack.
The IDF declared that the operation was executed shortly after receiving intelligence on the gathering, emphasizing their ongoing evaluations of the strike's full effects.
Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis have routinely launched missiles towards Israel and targeted commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, justifying their actions as solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
In retaliation, Israel has executed air strikes on locations within Houthi-controlled regions of Yemen to mitigate Houthi assaults. Last week, reports indicated Israel's engagement with Houthi targets in Sanaa, following a missile strike claimed to have employed cluster munitions.
