TEL AVIV – 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 Israeli military said an initial investigation showed the blast was caused by “the falling of an aerial target” that did not set off alarms. It said air patrols had been stepped up.
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.
Yemen’s Huthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack that caused an explosion at a building near the US embassy in Tel Aviv.
The military official told a briefing 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.
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.
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.”
If an attack is confirmed, it would be the first to cause casualties in Tel Aviv since a rocket strike launched from Gaza wounded one person on May 26. Hundreds of rockets were fired at Tel Aviv in the Oct. 7 attacks that set off the war, but most were intercepted.
Israeli police said they received hundreds of reports around 3:00 am of “a strong explosion.”
The blast hit a building in a street near an annex of the US embassy in Israel, according to an AFP journalist, who saw broken windows.
During the search, a man in his fifties was “found dead in his apartment” bearing injuries caused by shrapnel, police said.
In Beirut, Israeli strikes on Thursday killed at least five people, including the commander of a Hamas-allied group in Lebanon, militant groups and a security source said.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked war in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly targeted militants of Jamaa Islamiya, whose armed wing has launched attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon over the past nine months.
A Lebanese security source said that an Israeli strike on a house near the southern village of Jmaijmeh killed three people and wounded several more.
Hezbollah said two of its members were among the dead, including Ali Jaafar Maatouq. A source close to the Islamist group described him as a commander of its elite Al Radwan operational unit.
The Israeli army confirmed that its air force had “eliminated” Ali Jaafar Maatouq in a strike against “a command centre where Hezbollah terrorists were operating in the Jmaijmeh region.”
The Magen David Adom emergency medical service said in a statement that it treated a man and a woman injured in their home, and two others hurt in the street. All four were taken to hospital with “relatively minor” injuries, it said.
“It may have been an aerial explosion… We were very lucky,” said Peretz Amar, the Tel Aviv police commander, adding that “the investigation is ongoing.”
A Tel Aviv resident told AFP that he was awakened by the explosion and “everything shook”.
Police called on residents to “respect safety instructions and not to approach or touch debris or shrapnel that may contain explosives.”
The fire brigade said it was possible that a drone had caused the explosion.
The war in Gaza began with the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 42 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s military retaliation has killed at least 38,848 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry.
