Israel acknowledges it assassinated Hamas chief Haniyeh for first time

Defence Minister Israel Katz warns Houthi rebels that Israel will ‘behead’ its leaders as it did to Hamas.

Israel’s Minister of Defence Israel Katz has for the first time publicly acknowledged that his country assassinated Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, warning that the Yemen-based Houthis will also be struck a “severe blow”.

Speaking on Monday evening at an event honouring Defence Ministry personnel, Katz said Israel had “dealt a severe blow to the axis of evil, and we will also deal a severe blow to the Houthi terrorist organisation in Yemen, which remains the last to stand”.

“When the Houthi terrorist organisation is firing missiles at Israel, I want to convey a clear message to them at the beginning of my remarks: We have defeated Hamas, we have defeated Hezbollah, we have blinded Iran’s defence systems and damaged the production systems, we have toppled the [Bashar al-]Assad regime in Syria,” Katz said.

Israel will “damage [Houthi] strategic infrastructure, and we will behead their leaders – just as we did to Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon – we will do it in [Yemen’s] Hodeidah and Sanaa”, Katz added, referencing the subsequent killings of Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The Houthis have carried out numerous missile attacks on Israel in recent months, including a strike on Tel Aviv on Saturday using what the Houthis described as a hypersonic ballistic missile.