Firefighting teams on Monday were struggling to contain a massive blaze at Yemen’s Hodeida port, days after a deadly Israeli strike on Houthi targets damaged oil storage facilities and endangered aid ships in the harbour.
Heavy flames and black smoke were seen spiralling into the sky for a third consecutive day following the strike on Saturday, said a correspondent in Hodeida. Firefighting teams appear to have made little progress, with the blaze seemingly expanding in some parts of the port, the correspondent said, amid fears it could reach food storage facilities.
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Analysis of satellite imagery from Planet by Dutch peace organisation PAX showed at least 33 destroyed oil storage tankers, said Wim Zwijnenburg, a project leader with the organisation.
“We expect (to find) more damage, as not all storage tanks are visible because of heavy smoke” from the fire and burning fuel, Mr. Zwijnenburg said. The fuel depot is run by the Yemen Petroleum Company which said on Sunday that the six people killed in the Israel strike were its employees. The Houthis say more than 80 others were wounded in the attack, many of them with severe burns. The strike on Saturday was the first by Israel on the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country and came in response to a Houthi drone strike that breached Israel’s air defences, killing one person in Tel Aviv the day before.
The Houthis, who are fighting Israel as part of a regional network of Iran-backed groups, have pledged a “huge” response to the strikes and threatened to once again attack Tel Aviv.
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