Staggering Death Toll Rises to 32 in Single-Deadliest Israeli Strike on Journalists

Unable to strike Ansarallah's military capabilities in Yemen, Israel has attacked its civilian cabinet members and a major press building in recent weeks.

On Thursday, a drone launched by Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, struck the southern Israel city of Eilat. No casualties were reported, but it was another sign that the conflict between Yemen and Israel — which Yeman has said will end the moment the genocide in Gaza ends — continues apace despite Israel’s widespread assault on Yemen’s civilian infrastructure. Today’s story, by Shuaib Almosawa, who is reporting from Yeman, and Murtaza Hussain, based here in the United States, looks at a particularly shocking Israeli strike that may be the single-deadliest attack ever against journalists.

Meanwhile, an attack at a Jordan border crossing Thursday that injured two Israeli soldiers has led to its indefinite closure, threatening to drive Gaza deeper into famine. A letter-writing and phone-calling campaign has been launched to try to drive hundreds of thousands of calls to the White House, urging Trump to lift the siege, which he alone, outside of Israeli leaders, has the power to do. You can join that campaign here.

On Air Force One just now, Trump directly threatened the licenses of any broadcast news outlet that was critical of him or, in his words, “hit Trump.” With the administration increasingly consolidating control of the media, independent and self-sustaining reporting, with a direct link to its audience, is more important than ever. If you know anybody who should be getting these emails, please forward this to them and encourage them to sign up. We now have more than 387,000 subscribers, over 12,600 of those who are paying subscribers. Another roughly 17,000 have chipped in with donations that keep us going. We couldn’t do it without you, but we could do it with even more strength if we can get something like 10% of our audience giving.

If you haven’t yet, please upgrade your subscription or gift one to a friend or family member. Or take a moment to make a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible donation to support our work. Your generosity keeps this work free for everybody.

-Ryan Grim

Yemeni soldiers carry coffins during a funeral procession on September 16, 2025 in Sana'a, Yemen. Around 32 Yemeni journalists were killed in the Israeli airstrikes, one of the largest mass killings of journalists in one attack Photo by Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images.

By Shuaib Almosawa and Murtaza Hussain

SANA’A, YEMEN—Last Wednesday, on September 10, the Israeli military carried out a wave of bombings in Yemen’s capital of Sana’a, killing dozens of people at several locations. Among the targets hit was a building that Israeli officials referred to as "the Houthis' military public relations headquarters.”

Videos and images of dead and wounded civilians, including several children, quickly began to disseminate on social media after the attack. Among the dead were reported to be a large number of journalists and media workers—with as many as 32 killed in the strike. In a report on the aftermath of the Sana’a bombings, Human Rights Watch cited experts who noted that the office building struck by Israel was home to the media headquarters of Ansarallah, which is the de facto government of the region, as well as the offices of two local newspapers.

The massacre of journalists from the papers Al-Yaman and 26 September was denounced by local Yemeni media groups, as well as international organizations. In a statement on Monday, the general-secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Anthony Bellanger, denounced the Israeli attack and demanded an independent investigation into the killings. A funeral procession was held for those killed in Sana’a on September 16.

“Targeting journalists is a grave violation of international law and an attack on the public’s right to know,” Bellanger said, calling it an “appalling massacre.” “We join our affiliate, the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, in demanding an immediate, swift, and truly independent investigation into this tragedy. Urgent steps must be taken to ensure the protection of journalists working in conflict zones.”

A funeral ceremony on September 16 for the 32 journalists who were killed at their offices in Sanaa, Yemen. Photo by Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu via Getty Images.

The attack was the latest salvo in a bombing campaign that Israel has been carrying out in Yemen and across the region. Many of its attacks in Yemen have focused on civilian infrastructure, while the core military capacities of Ansarallah are believed to be dispersed at fortified locations away from urban centers.

Previously, on August 28, Israel had carried out a coordinated series of strikes in Sana’a that succeeded in killing numerous senior members of the Ansarallah-led government that controls the region. The attack killed the prime minister, Ahmed Ghaleb al-Rahawi, two of his senior aides, and nine cabinet members. While Al-Rahawi and the other cabinet members were largely seen as figureheads without any real decision making power, the attack was nevertheless the most serious blow that Israel has struck against the group in the past two years of fighting, after Ansarallah launched a military intervention and naval blockade targeting Israel-linked shipping in solidarity with the besieged Gaza Strip.

Following the killings, mass public funerals were held for the prime minister and other cabinet members, where the group announced its intention to continue fighting against Israel regardless of the attack. In a speech following the announcement of al-Rahawi’s death, Mahdi al-Mashat, president of the Ansarallah-led governing council, vowed to continue the campaign, stating that “airstrikes will not frighten us, nor will threats intimidate us, for our dignity from God is martyrdom, and His promise to us of certain victory is a truth that cannot be broken.”

Among those killed in the attack alongside al-Rahawi reportedly include Mujahid Ahmed Abdullah, Minister of Justice; Jamal Amer, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Moeen Hashim Ahmed Al-Mahaqri, Minister of Economy and Trade; Hachem Charaf al-Din, Minister of Information; as well as several other senior cabinet officials. The country’s Defense Minister, Mohamed al-Atifi, and Chief of General Staff, Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Ghamari, were said to be killed by initial reports, but are now believed to have survived.

Israeli officials celebrated the killings as an intelligence coup, characterizing it as a retaliation for Ansarallah’s ongoing attacks against the country, including the recent firing of ballistic missiles allegedly armed with cluster warheads. Israel vows more attacks will come.

Ansarallah, however, has continued to fire drones and missiles at Israel, including a drone strike in early September that hit Ramon Airport in southern Israel. Meanwhile, analysts and officials associated with the group said that the impact of the August strike on Ansarallah’s operations were largely symbolic, having killed mostly civilian officials with no real power in the movement.

“A lot of the ministers who died weren’t heavyweights. They don’t represent a tribe or a powerful party; they were just on paper to make the government look more inclusive. Their deaths aren’t really going to change anything in terms of how the Houthis manage day-to-day governance,” said Mohammad al-Basha, a Middle East security analyst specializing in Yemen. “But watching many of these technocrats being buried, you do feel sad. A lot of people think that, just because you join the Houthi government, you’re a bad person. But people have homes and families in Houthi areas, and not everyone can afford to leave and live abroad, or even wants to leave their homes.”

In the days following the killing of their officials, Ansarallah escalated attacks on Israel including missile and drone launches like the one that struck Ramon Airport. Israeli officials have escalated their own rhetoric in response, with defense minister Israel Katz invoking a Biblical plague that Israel would inflict on Yemen, stating on September 4 that “The Houthis are firing missiles at Israel again. A plague of darkness, a plague of [death of] the firstborn—we will complete all ten plagues.”

Senior officials with close ties to Ansarallah told Drop Site that they were undeterred by the threats as well as the strike that hit the group’s ministers, claiming that they had no influence on their military operations. They added that the identities of Ansarallah’s command for its missile and drone force were concealed even within the movement.

“Even al-Mashat has no knowledge of what’s going on in the battlefield. Like us, he gets to know about missile launches from Yahya Saree,” said one senior official with close ties to Ansarallah, who asked to remain anonymous as he was not authorized to speak to the media. Yahya Saree is the military spokesperson for Ansarallah who issues statements regarding its drone and missile operations targeting Israel.

The leaders of the Ansarallah movement, including its head Abdulmalik al-Houthi, along with its drone and missile production and launch sites, are believed to be dispersed around the country at fortified locations—sometimes built into mountains—and far away from urban areas like the capital of Sana’a.

Israel’s attack on civilian leadership—a step that neither the UAE-Saudi military coalition or the U.S. are known to have attempted during their own direct conflicts with Ansarallah—represented a conscious decision by the country to further escalate its war against noncombatants connected to the group. Despite Ansarallah’s claims to be unaffected by the attack, it also represented an improvement in Israeli intelligence capabilities in Yemen.

Due to censorship restrictions in Ansarallah-controlled areas, accurate data on the scale of civilian casualties from Israeli operations is not readily available. But over the past year numerous attacks on civilian infrastructure that have caused civilian casualties have been reported, including a major bombing of the port of Hodeida last year that killed over a dozen people.

“I do not think that the Saudis, the UAE, or the U.S. had ever decided to kill civilian Houthi leadership in the way that the Israelis did, who have signalled that they are going to kill whoever they want to kill,” said al-Basha. “It’s not an easy target. They did not hit the prime minister’s office, or even a government office. They hit a very specific building. They knew who was there, and that is an improvement in intelligence.”

Defiant Stance

In the wake of the serial attacks, several Ansarallah officials made veiled references in their public statements to the role of “Arab Zionists” in the attack—a designation commonly used to refer to Gulf Arab states like the UAE and Saudi Arabia who previously fought against the group, and who have either normalized relations with Israel or have not taken any real action against Tel Aviv. Days after the bombing, the group launched numerous drones and ballistic missiles at Israel or Israeli-linked maritime targets in the Red Sea, while vowing to conduct a larger retaliation in the future.

Ansarallah officials who spoke to Drop Site pointed to their own demonstrated resilience in past confrontations with regional powers, and they characterized Israel’s decision to kill its civilian officials as an act of strategic desperation after nearly two years of fighting. The Houthis withstood a years-long war against a U.S.-backed Saudi and UAE-led coalition that started in 2015.

“Israel had no option left but to target the governmental side. This does not constitute any military achievement at all, since the role of the government is to provide services to the people, and it cannot remain isolated from them because its primary function is to serve citizens and hold its meetings publicly,” said Mujeeb Shamsan, a colonel in the Moral Guidance Department of Ansarallah, which does public relations for the Defense Ministry. “Throughout the period of its aggression against Yemen, the United States failed to impact Yemen’s military capabilities. … it positioned its industrial infrastructure, military stockpiles, and capabilities in places beyond reach.”

Regardless of the suffering inflicted by Israeli attacks—which have hit critical infrastructure like ports, fuel depots, and power stations, while killing an unknown number of Yemenis—Shamsan ruled out any end to the war until the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip comes to an end.

“Our main battle is the battle of Gaza and Palestine, and the Zionist enemy should remain prepared for ongoing Yemeni operations,” he said. “It will never enjoy security and stability so long as the Yemeni people—with their leadership, unprecedented popular unity, and armed forces that employ and mobilize all their capacities and resources—stand in defense of their cause.”

Israeli officials have also vowed that their war with the group will continue. “The destiny of Yemen is the destiny of Tehran,and this is just the beginning,” Israeli defense minister Israel Katz said in a statement praising the attacks that killed Ansarallah’s governing cabinet. “The Houthis will learn the hard way that whoever threatens and harms Israel will be harmed sevenfold, and they will not determine when this ends.”

While Ansarallah lacks airpower, the movement had made huge improvements in its ability to carry out air defenses in some regions under its control, reportedly downing dozens of U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles, several manned aircraft, and reportedly nearly hitting an advanced F-35 fighter jet during a weeks-long U.S. air campaign targeting the group earlier this year. That campaign ended with an agreement by both sides to avoid targeting each other's assets directly.

A long-term Israeli campaign to destroy Ansarallah from the air would also be extremely challenging, as the group has become adept over years of fighting the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S., at dispersing its forces to resist just such an air campaign. The group is believed to have dispersed its missile launchers and production facilities in order to be resilient to aerial attacks. This resilience is a byproduct of its evolution after nearly a decade of defending against airstrikes from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the U.S.

“This is the reason why it's so difficult to deal with the Houthis: everything is decentralized. They don't use centralized fuel depots, they use trucks. The assembly sites for missiles are in different places. It’s not like Iran where they have major missile factories, everything is split up,” said al-Basha. “Even if you did kill their chief of staff or defense minister, they’re not the most important people in the group. The important people are the experts who know how to assemble ballistic missiles, who know how to fire anti-ship missiles, and who know how to use satellite navigation systems. These are the people who are important, and they are going to be very hard to target.”