WHO chief was at Yemen airport during Israeli airstrikes, crew member injured

Who are the Houthis?published at 15:39 Greenwich Mean Time

Three Houthi fighters, holding weapons and looking into the distance.

The Houthis are an armed political and religious group that formed in the 1990s and supports Yemen’s Shia Muslim Zaidi minority.

They claim to be part of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance” against Israel, the US and the West in general – along with armed groups such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

In the early 2000s, the Houthis fought a series of rebellions against Yemen’s authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

During the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, President Saleh was forced to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, but his government had many problems.

The Houthis seized control of the northern province of Saada and the capital, Sanaa, after forming an unlikely alliance with Saleh and security forces still loyal to him.

But neighboring Saudi Arabia feared the Houthis would take over Yemen and make it a satellite of Iran.

The Saudis formed a coalition of Arab countries that intervened in the war. But years of airstrikes and ground fighting have not dislodged the Houthis.