Four Royal Air Force Typhoon jets slipped into Yemen’s airspace in the early hours of Friday morning, loaded with 230kg Paveway IV precision-guided bombs intended to pound rebel positions.
With a range of just 16 miles, the bombs were likely carried inland and then launched as part of a night-time raid responding to Houthi attacks on the Royal Navy in the Red Sea.
Explosions soon lit up the sky as an airbase, military camp and the Houthi’s Al-Masirah television station were targeted before the warplanes banked away to return to base, videos on the ground in Yemen show.
The Typhoons had left Akrotiri RAF base on the southern tip of Cyprus an hour or so before, accompanied by an Airbus Defence & Space A330 Voyager tanker to refuel the planes on their mission over the Gulf.