Yemeni harbour still ablaze two days after Israeli attack as US says Israel justified
Firefighting teams are struggling to contain a blaze at Yemen’s Hodeidah port, two days after a deadly Israeli strike damaged oil storage facilities and endangered aid ships in the harbour, AFP reports.
Firefighting teams appear to have made little progress. The blaze appears to be expanding in some parts of the port amid fears it could reach food storage facilities.
High-resolution satellite images taken by Maxar Technologies showed flames consuming a heavily damaged fuel storage area at the harbour in Hodeidah, a city on the Red Sea.
An analysis of satellite imagery from Planet by the 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, Zwijnenburg said.
When asked by reporters about whether an attack on infrastructure will hurt the civilian population more than the Houthi administration, Robert Wood, deputy US ambassador to the UN, said: “Israel has the right to defend itself. And I’m not going to stand up here and question what Israel’s targets were, whether they were appropriate or not in this particular case.”
He continued: “They had a right to respond to that attack on Tel Aviv. And again, the fingerprints on all of this are Iran’s. And so we’re going to continue to call on Iran to end its support for the Houthis and their terrorist activities.”
A drone attack on Tel Aviv on Friday killed one person. The Houthis claimed responsibility for it.
Israeli tech firm ordered to compensate employee fired for calling Israel ‘terrorist state’
Wix Online Platforms has been ordered to pay $38,100 in compensation to an Irish former employee whom it fired after she made her comments about Israel on social media.
According to The Irish Sun newspaper, the multinational company, which has an office in Dublin, accepted that it had unfairly dismissed customer care team lead Courtney Carey on October 23 over online comments she had made about the Israeli war on Gaza.
Carey said she has been effectively blacklisted in the tech sector since the incident.
In posts and comments online, Carey criticised the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza by Israel.
The controversy prompted Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin to weigh in on the issue, saying Carey’s dismissal was “unacceptable” because employees “should be allowed their individual viewpoints”.
