At least one person was killed and ten others injured early Friday in a drone attack launched by Yemen’s Shiite rebels, better known as the Houthis, on Tel Aviv. The attack, the first fatal attack by Yemeni rebels on Israeli soil, comes amid a new escalation between Iran’s main proxy force in the region, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and the Israel Defense Forces.
“A preliminary investigation shows that the explosion in Tel Aviv was caused by the fall of an aerial object that did not trigger any alert. The matter is being investigated in depth. Numerous forces are already operating at the site. The Air Force will increase patrols of the aircraft operating to protect the country’s skies. There are no changes in the directives of the Home Front Command,” the Israeli army admitted in an official statement on Friday morning on the social network X. The debate is open in Israel about why, once identified, the aircraft was not considered a “hostile object.” Hours after the attack, the Air Force acknowledged the “serious error” and assumed responsibility for the incident.
The Israel Defense Forces later made public the nature of the unmanned aircraft launched by the Shiite rebels: an Iranian-made Samad 3 drone, probably launched from Yemen. Israeli military officials assume that the drone therefore came from a southern direction and believe that the launch of a second aircraft from the east – which was eliminated before entering Israeli territory – was intended to make it difficult to identify and neutralize the one that ended up exploding in the streets of the Israeli city. Meanwhile, the Saudi media Al Arabiya reported yesterday morning that US forces intercepted a ballistic missile and three drones launched by Yemeni rebels against Israel. The fourth exploded in Tel Aviv.
For their part, the Houthi rebels – who control much of Yemeni territory, including the capital, Sanaa – were quick to admit responsibility for the attack on Israel’s most populous city. Their spokesman, Yahya Sareadescribed the attack as a “quality operation (…) capable of evading enemy interception systems and undetectable by radars.” “The operation has successfully achieved its objectives,” said the spokesman for the Yemeni organization, who promised more “details on the military operation that targeted Tel Aviv.”
Meanwhile, the two main Palestinian armed groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, welcomed the attack on Tel Aviv, which they described as a “natural response” to Israeli “crimes” against Palestinians. “We applaud and congratulate the Yemeni Armed Forces and the Houthi brothers for the qualitative military operation that has struck the heart of the city of Tel Aviv, the centre of the entity and a symbol of its pride,” said the organisation that has had internal control of Gaza for 18 years.
According to the investigation, the drone launched by the Houthis exploded in the air at around 3 a.m. local time in central Tel Aviv near a US diplomatic building and hit parked vehicles and surrounding buildings. According to Israel’s national emergency and first aid service, Magen David Adom, the only fatality so far in the attack, a man in his 50s, was in bed when he was hit by the debris. He was unable to recover from shrapnel wounds sustained in the explosion.
The Houthi aggression – until now, in Israel, the Yemeni rebels had only reached the town of Eilat, on the shores of the Red Sea – comes in the midst of a moment of high tension between Hezbollah and Israel, which raises fears of a new open confrontation between the Lebanese Shiite organization – the main force proxy of the Islamic Republic in the region – and the IDF, with no sign of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza between Tel Aviv and Hamas that would ease tensions.
In the last few hours the organization led by Hassan Nasrallahwho does not believe that in the current scenario of open war operations in Gaza, the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu prepared for a ground invasion of Lebanon, launched up to ten projectiles from its stronghold in the south of the Levantine country against northern Israel.
On Thursday, the Israeli army confirmed the death of two commanders belonging to the elite forces of Hezbollah – as well as several fighters from the Shiite organization – whom it identified as responsible for launching attacks against its territory in a bombardment against the town of Jmaijmeh, in southern Lebanon. A day earlier, on Wednesday, Nasrallah said that Israel “is going through the worst days since its creation” and threatened that his organization could “attack towns not hitherto attacked” if the IDF continued its operations on Lebanese soil. The day before, several Israeli airstrikes targeting Hezbollah infrastructure killed five Syrian civilians in Bint Jbeil, in southern Lebanon, according to the state news agency NNA. More than a hundred civilians and 300 fighters from the Iranian-sponsored organization have died since the exchange of fire with Israel began on October 8.