Houthi supporters chant slogans during a weekly anti-Israel rally in Sanaa, Yemen, on Friday. Osamah Abdulrahman/AP hide caption
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Osamah Abdulrahman/AP
CAIRO — An Israeli airstrike killed the prime minister of the Houthi rebel-controlled government in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, the Houthis said Saturday. He was the most senior Houthi official killed in the Israeli-U.S. campaign against the Iranian-backed rebels.
Ahmed al-Rahawi was killed in a Thursday strike in Sanaa along with a number of ministers, the rebels said in a statement. Other ministers and officials were wounded, the statement added without providing further details.
The premier was targeted along with other members of his Houthi-controlled government during a “routine workshop held by the government to evaluate its activities and performance over the past year,” the Houthi statement said.
Thursday’s Israeli strike took place as the rebel-owned television station was broadcasting a speech by Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the secretive leader of the rebel group in which he was sharing updates on the latest Gaza developments and vowing retaliation against Israel. Senior Houthi officials used to gather to watch al-Houthi’s prerecorded speeches.
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Al-Rahawi wasn’t part of the inner circle around Abdul Malik al-Houthi that runs the military and strategic affairs of the group. His government, like the previous ones, was tasked with running the day-to-day civilian affairs in Sanaa and other Houthi-held areas.
The strike that killed the prime minister targeted a meeting for Houthi leaders in a villa in Beit Baws, an ancient village in southern Sanaa, three tribal leaders told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions.
On Thursday, the Israeli military said that it “precisely struck a Houthi terrorist regime military target in the area of Sanaa in Yemen.” The military had no immediate comment on Saturday’s announcement of the prime minister’s killing.
“Yemen endures a lot for the victory of the Palestinian people,” al-Rahawi said following an Israeli strike last week that struck an oil facility owned by the country’s main oil company, which is controlled by the rebels in Sanaa as well as a power plant.
The Aug. 24 strike came three days after the Houthis launched a ballistic missile toward Israel that its military described as the first cluster bomb the rebels had launched at it since 2023.
The prime minister hailed from the southern province of Abyan, and was an ally to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. He allied himself with the Houthis when the rebels overran Sanaa, and much of the north and center of the country in 2014, initiating the country’s long-running civil war. He was appointed as prime minister in August 2024.
Al-Rahawi is the most senior Houthi official to be killed since the United States and Israel began their air and naval campaign in response to the rebels’ missile and drone attacks on Israel and on ships in the Red Sea. The U.S. and Israeli strikes killed dozens of people. One U.S. strike in April hit a prison holding African migrants in the northern Sadaa province, killing at least 68 people and wounding 47 others.
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Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst with the Crisis Group International, a Brussels-based think-tank, called the killing of the Houthi prime minister a “serious setback” for the rebels.
He said the escalation marks an Israeli shift from striking the rebels’ infrastructure to targeting their leaders, including senior military figures, which “poses a greater threat to their command structure.”
The Houthis launched a campaign targeting ships in response to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, saying they were doing so in solidarity with the Palestinians. Their attacks over the past two years have upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1 trillion of goods pass each year.
In May, the Trump administration announced a deal with the Houthis to end the airstrikes in return for an end to attacks on shipping. The rebels, however, said the agreement did not include halting attacks on targets it believed were aligned with Israel.
