AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthi militia on Saturday strongly condemned Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and vowed to support the Lebanese group in retaliation.

However, the Houthi’s calls for revenge came as many Yemenis expressed joy over Nasrallah’s death.

The Houthi Supreme Political Council described the Hezbollah leader as a “great mujahid” who opposed Israel and the US, while also supporting Palestinians, adding that his death would result in “the elimination of the Israeli enemy.”

The Houthi government also strongly condemned the killing, and called for punishment of both Israel and the US.

“We urge all free people around the world to continue working for justice and punishing the Israeli and American enemies,” the Houthi government in Sanaa said.

Nasrallah was killed on Friday in an Israeli strike on the group’s headquarters on the southern outskirts of Beirut.

Houthi sympathizers expressed support for the Lebanese group and called for vengeance.

“Revenge is coming, and victory is unavoidable,” Nasruddin Amer, a Houthi media official, said on X.

The Houthis are members of the so-called Axis of Resistance, which includes Iran-backed militias in the region, such as Hezbollah, and have long expressed support for the Lebanese group.

Hezbollah has been accused of training Houthi fighters both outside and inside Yemen, facilitating the transfer of Iranian weapons to Yemen, and harboring Houthis in Lebanon.

At the same time, critics of the Houthi militia have celebrated Nasrallah’s death, blaming him for fueling Houthi military expansions across Yemen that have resulted in the death of thousands of Yemenis and the displacement of millions.

Mohammed Al-Dhabyani, a Yemeni journalist who shared an old video of the Hezbollah leader expressing his support for the deadly Houthi offensive on Yemen’s central city of Marib, said that Nasrallah was responsible for the deaths of over a million people in Syria and half a million in Yemen, as well as the destruction of cities in both countries.

“If Hezbollah had not entered Yemen and provided training, armament, management, media, and political support to the Houthis, they would not have risen to their current status,” Al-Dhabyani told Arab News.

“We celebrate this criminal’s death because his hands are stained with our blood and has displaced us,” he added.

In early 2021, the Houthis renewed a major military offensive to seize control of the energy-rich city of Marib, an offensive that lasted more than a year and killed thousands of people.

The Houthis were forced to halt their attacks after failing to achieve their objective.

Nasrallah said at the start of the offensive that Marib would fall to the Houthis and that the militia would win the war, a remark that sparked outrage in Yemen against Hezbollah and was interpreted as proof of the organization’s support for the Houthis.

“If you celebrate the death of someone who murdered, raped, and displaced your family for more than a decade, you are a normal, very normal person, even if the killer is also your enemy,” Ahmed Al-Qurashi, a human rights activist, said on Facebook. 

According to Najeeb Ghallab, an undersecretary at Yemen’s Information Ministry and a political analyst, Iran has empowered Hezbollah to create a copy of the group in Yemen to serve its regional agendas.

Nasrallah’s death, he said, has reignited Yemenis’ hopes for the formation of an international coalition to assist the Yemeni government in defeating the Houthis.

“Yemenis are optimistic that the Houthis will face the same fate as Hezbollah. They do not want Israel to intervene, but they do want the international community to assist the Yemenis in a military operation to remove the Houthis,” Ghallab said.

He added: “The Iranian agent in Lebanon (Hezbollah) was in charge of completely supervising the Houthi establishment. As a result, the Houthis appear to be a copy of Hezbollah in terms of media, politics, and administration.”

Yemen’s war began a decade ago, when the Houthis militarily seized power and spread across the country, resulting in thousands of deaths, millions of displacements, and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.