Death toll rises in Israeli strike on Yemen's Hudaida port

The death toll from an Israeli strike on Yemen's port of Hudaida has climbed to six, Houthi health authorities said, with firefighting teams battling a blaze at the harbour.

Saturday's strike on the port, a key entry point for fuel and humanitarian aid to war-ravaged Yemen, is the first claimed by Israel in the Arabian peninsula's poorest country, about 2,000 kilometres away.

It killed six people and injured 83, many of them with severe burns, the Health Ministry said in a statement carried by Houthi media. It said three others remained missing.

Yemen's Houthis will continue to attack Israel and will not abide by any "rules of engagement," the group's spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam told Qatar's Al Jazeera TV on Sunday.

Abdulsalam said there would be "no red lines" in the Houthis' response to Israel. "All sensitive institutions with all its levels will be a target for us", he said

An employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security concerns, said it could take days to contain the fire, a view echoed by Yemen experts.

"There is concern that the firefighters may not be able to contain the spreading fire, which could continue for days," said Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group, warning that it could reach food storage facilities at the harbour.

'Dire humanitarian effects'

The attack is "going to have dire humanitarian effects on the millions living in Yemen," Nicholas Brumfield, a Yemen expert, said on social media platform X.

It will drive up prices of fuel but also any goods carried by truck, the analyst said.

Yemen's internationally-recognised government condemned the strike and held Israel responsible for a worsening humanitarian crisis.

A statement carried by the official Saba news agency said the Yemeni government holds "the Zionist entity fully responsible for any repercussions resulting from its airstrikes, including the deepening of a humanitarian crisis".

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani "strongly condemned" the attack saying it was "an expression of the aggressive behaviour of the child-killing Israeli regime".