TEL AVIV, June 19: Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels said they fired a drone that caused an explosion in Tel Aviv early Friday that left one person dead, injured four and set off a new shock for Israel more than nine months into its war in Gaza.
The rebels fired a “new drone called ‘Yafa’, which is capable of bypassing the enemy’s interception systems,” Huthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a statement on social media.
The Huthis, who have carried out dozens of attacks against Red Sea shipping to show support for Palestinians during the Gaza war, said their “UAV force” attacked “one of the important targets in the occupied Jaffa region, what is now called Israeli Tel Aviv.”
The rebels last Saturday had said they would “not hesitate to expand its military operations… until the aggression stops”.
Meanwhile, an Israeli military official said a “very big” drone was used in an attack on Tel Aviv on Friday that killed one person, and “human error” led to the missile not being intercepted.
The military official told a briefing that an attack by the Iran-backed Huthis was “one of the possibilities” being investigated.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “a very big drone that can travel long distances” was used in the attack which was at 3.12 am (0012 GMT).
He said the drone “crashed into an apartment building” and “it wasn’t a tiny drone”.
The official said the aim was “terrorism”. “Their main goal was to kill civilians in Israel.”
The official said the drone was detected but the alarm was not immediately raised because of “human error”.
“There was no alert that sounded in Tel Aviv because it wasn’t activated.
“There was a human error that caused the interception and defence systems not to be operated,” the official said.
“Obviously, one of the possibilities we’re looking into is Yemen because of the Huthi announcements. But we’re not ruling out anything.”
The official said another drone was detected on Israel’s eastern border.
“Last night, there was another incident where we thwarted a UAV on our eastern border, another UAV.” He gave no details on where it came from. – TVS
