TEL AVIV: Israel threatened retaliation on Friday after a drone claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels penetrated their vaunted air defenses and killed a civilian in a Tel Aviv apartment building near the US embassy annex.
The attack drew condemnation from UN chief Antonio Guterres and calls for “maximum restraint” to avoid “further escalation in the region”.
The pre-dawn strike came hours before Israel was dealt another blow – a UN Supreme Court ruling that its occupation of the Palestinian territories was “illegal” and must end as soon as possible.
The advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, is not binding, but it comes amid growing international condemnation of the way Israel is waging its war against Hamas in Gaza.
The administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the court's decision a “victory for justice.” Hamas said it was placing “the international system before the imperative of immediate action to end the occupation.”
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has presided over a major expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, insisted: “The Jewish people are not occupiers of their land.”
The Houthis are one of a number of Iranian-backed armed groups in the Middle East that have claimed responsibility for launching drones and rockets at Israel in retaliation for the Gaza war.
The group, which controls swathes of Yemen, including much of its Red Sea coast, has previously claimed attacks on Israeli cities including Ashdod, Haifa and Eilat, but Friday's strike appeared to be the first to breach Israel's modern air defenses.
The Houthis fired at Tel Aviv “with a new drone called the Yafa, which is capable of bypassing the enemy's interception systems,” said their spokesman Yahya Sari.
An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack at 3:12 a.m. (0012 GMT) used “a very large drone that can travel long distances.”
According to him, the drone was detected, but due to human error, the alarm did not go off in time, and it crashed into a residential building.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel believes the drone used was Iranian-made and upgraded so it could reach Tel Aviv from Yemen – at least 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles).
Medical services reported that one civilian was killed and four people suffered “relatively minor” injuries.
Defense Minister Yoav Galant vowed revenge.
“The security system will deal with anyone who tries to harm the State of Israel or direct terrorism against it in a decisive and unexpected way,” he said in comments posted on the X social media platform.
In grainy surveillance footage, the buzz of what appeared to be a drone was followed by an explosion that shook the building and set off car alarms.
The blast happened about 100 meters (yards) from the US embassy annex, said an AFP journalist who saw broken windows along a street lined with residential buildings.
“It woke me up because the vibration of the sound was like a 747 jet coming in,” said Kenneth Davis, an Israeli who lived in a hotel across the street from the building that was hit.
“And then the explosion… everything exploded in the room,” he told AFPTV.
Since November, the Houthis have also carried out dozens of drone and missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden that they say are linked to Israel.
The United States and Britain launched an airstrike campaign in January to deter attacks on the ships.
The war in Gaza was sparked by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli data.
The militants also took 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 42 Israeli soldiers say have died.
Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 38,848 people, mostly civilians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory where fighting took place on Friday.
Clashes were heard between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army, with explosions and shelling in the Tal Al-Hawa area of Gaza City, according to residents.
The war has destroyed much of Gaza's housing and other infrastructure, leaving virtually the entire population displaced and without food or drinking water.
Many live in unsanitary conditions. Health authorities in Gaza and Israel said Thursday that the polio virus had been detected in samples of Gaza's sewage.
The World Health Organization said on Friday that no case of the highly contagious disease had been detected in Gaza so far.
