Israel’s military said Yemen launched a missile towards Israel early on Saturday morning, the first time it had faced fire from that country.

Sirens went off around Beer Sheba and the area near Israel’s main nuclear research centre for the third time overnight on Friday into Saturday as Iran and Hezbollah continued to fire on Israel.

The Houthis, a rebel group backed by Tehran, have held Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since 2014. They did not immediately acknowledge launching an attack against Israel.

The Houthis had stayed out of the war as the rebels have had an uneasy ceasefire for years with Saudi Arabia, which launched a war against the group on behalf of Yemen’s exiled government in 2015.

Attacks on vessels during the Israel-Hamas war upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which about one trillion dollars (£753.7 billion) worth of goods passed each year before the war. The rebels also fired drones at Israel.

Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities hours after threatening to “escalate and expand” its campaign against Tehran on Friday. Iran vowed to retaliate and struck a base in Saudi Arabia, wounding US service members and damaging planes.

On Friday, Brigadeer General Yahya Saree, a military spokesman for the Houthis, issued a pre-recorded statement outlining several ways the rebels could join the war on behalf of Iran.

“We affirm that our fingers are on the trigger for direct military intervention in any of the following cases,” Mr Saree said. They included the “continuation of the escalation against the Islamic Republic and the Axis of Jihad and Resistance, as dictated by the theatre of military operations.”

In 2024, the Trump administration launched strikes against the Houthis that ended weeks later. The US-led campaign against the Houthi rebels, overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, turned into the most intense running sea battle the Navy had faced since the Second World War.

The possible entrance of the Houthis into the war also called into question whether the rebels will again target commercial shipping traveling through the Red Sea corridor. The Houthi rebels attacked more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors, from November 2023 until January 2025.

That would cause further chaos in global shipping, which is reeling from Iran’s stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil and natural gas once passed.

Prior to the attack from Yemen, there appeared to be a breakthrough as Tehran agreed to allow humanitarian aid and agricultural shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, accepting a request from the United Nations.

Ali Bahreini, the country’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said Iran agreed to “facilitate and expedite” such movement.

The vital waterway usually handles a fifth of the world’s oil shipments and nearly a third of the world’s fertiliser trade. While markets and governments have largely focused on blocked supplies of oil and natural gas, the restriction of fertiliser ingredients and trade threatens farming and food security around the world.

“This measure reflects Iran’s continued commitment to supporting humanitarian efforts and ensuring that essential aid reaches those in need without delay,” Mr Bahreini said on the social platform X. The UN earlier announced a task force to address the ripple effects that the war has had on aid delivery.

SOURCE: Associated Press AND AGENCIES