The Houthis top military commander was killed, the Yemeni-based terror group announced Thursday. The elimination of Major General Mohammed Abdul Karim al-Ghamari marks a major Israeli achievement in the war against its Iran-backed enemies.

The Israel Defense Force targeted General Ghamari and other Houthi leaders back in August, hitting a building at Sanaa, where they gathered to listen to a televised speech of the group’s leader, Abdeulmalik al Houthi. The Houthi prime minister, Ahmed al-Rahawi, was killed in the attack, but the fate of the military chief of staff was unknown. 

The Houthis said that Ghamari survived, and at times even issued messages in his name. Yet, on Thursday they officially announced his death “while fulfilling his duties.” The Houthis named another general, Yousuf al-Madani, who is Abdulmalik al Houthi’s brother in law, as replacement. 

Acknowledging on Thursday that Ghamari was killed in an Israeli strike, the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, added, “We will do the same against any threat in the future as well.” The top Houthi military commander joins several terror leaders that Israel has killed in the course of the two-year war that Hamas launched on October 7, 2023. 

Last September, Israel killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with the top Iranian proxy army’s military leaders. In Gaza, Israel killed Hamas’s top commander, Yehyeh Sinwar, his brother Mohammed, and chief of staff Mohammed Deif.

While eliminating these and other regional terror leaders resulted from years of deep intelligence gathering, though, Israel had no such knowledge of the Houthis. Yemen is nearly 1,400 miles from Israel, and the Houthis seemed far from the country’s target radar.

Shortly after October 7, though, the Yemeni group announced that it will help the struggle of the Gaza “resistance.” Its attacks on Israeli population centers with ballistic missiles and drones, which became a major nuisance for the citizens. The Houthis also claimed to target Israeli shipping, which in fact all but stopped commercial maritime traffic in the Red Sea, where nearly 20 percent of world commercial shipping sails. 

Regardless of this week’s announcement of a cease-fire in Gaza, the Houthis vowed to continue fighting Israel. The “rounds of confrontation with the enemy are not over,” it said in a statement. “The Zionist enemy will receive punishment for its crimes until Jerusalem is liberated.”