Israel is only at the beginning of its campaign against the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with Channel 14 on Thursday, hours after Israeli warplanes struck the capital’s airport in its biggest attack yet. Sana’a, Yemen.

“We’re just getting started with them,” he said.

Israel’s military confirmed it struck Houthi “military targets” in Yemen today, killing at least three, accusing the Yemeni rebels of being “at the heart of Iran’s terrorist axis”, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying after the strikes, that his country would continue to hit the Houthis “until we finish the job.”

“We are determined to cut off this terrorist branch of the Iranian axis of evil. We will continue until we finish the job,” Netanyahu said in a video released by his office.

“Air Force fighter jets hit military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime on the west coast and in the interior of Yemen,” the IDF said in a statement, saying its airstrikes were in response to “repeated attacks” by Shiite rebels “against the state of Israel and its citizens”.

The Al Masirah television channel, controlled by the Houthi rebels, reported that three people were killed and 11 wounded by the Israeli shelling.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was about to board a plane at the airport when it was attacked, adding that a crew member on the plane was injured, he said in a statement.

Among the targets hit were “infrastructure used by the Houthi terrorist regime for its military activities” at Sana’a International Airport in the capital, power stations in Khiziyaz and Ras Qanatib, and infrastructure in the ports of Hodeidah, Salid and Ras Qanatib on the coast.

“These infrastructures were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to transport Iranian weapons into the region and to bring in senior Iranian officials,” the IDF stressed.

The Israeli prime minister said on Monday that he had asked the army to “destroy the infrastructure” of the Houthis, who two days earlier had fired a rocket at Israel that injured 16 people in Tel Aviv.

“The Houthi terrorist regime is at the heart of the Iranian axis of terrorism and their attacks on international shipping and sea lanes continue to destabilize the region and the rest of the world,” the Israeli military said today.

Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered on October 7, 2023 by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel, the Houthis have launched numerous attacks against Israel, claiming to be acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

The rebels, who control much of Yemen, have in recent months regularly launched attacks on ships they say are linked to Israel, the US or the UK in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, despite strikes by in retaliation to their territory the American army.

The Houthis are part of what Iran calls an “axis of resistance” against Israel, which includes Hamas, Iraqi militias and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.