Yemen’s Houthi guerrillas have reached Israeli territory with their weapons this Sunday for the third time since the beginning of the war in Gaza, which will be one year old on October 7. The rebels claim to have used a hypersonic ground-to-ground ballistic missile, which can exceed up to five times the speed of sound, although Israel denies that it is that type of weapon. The projectile was launched at dawn and fell near Tel Aviv and the country’s main airport, Ben Gurion. The effective use of this type of weapon is a novelty, since until now the militia had only managed to hit this area of Israel last July with a drone, not a missile, which ended the life of a resident of that city. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned that the rebels will pay a “high price” after pointing the finger at Iran, which supports the Houthis, as well as the Palestinians of Hamas and the Lebanese of Hezbollah.
This time, there have been no fatalities, significant damage or significant delays in communications. Life has gone on as normal in Tel Aviv and its surroundings, but the Yemeni rebels have managed to remind us once again that they continue to pose a threat. At the same time, they have demonstrated that, despite the attacks on their territory by an international military coalition to reduce their offensive capabilities, they still have weapons capable of reaching from a distance of some 2,000 kilometers to the most populated area of Israel, where a thick wall of anti-aircraft batteries has been deployed. The guerrillas have filmed from different points and spread on social networks what they claim is the launching of the missile, images that have been picked up by the Israeli press.
Israeli authorities have hinted that their defence systems, headed by the so-called Iron Dome, failed to intercept the rocket. “According to a preliminary examination, the missile apparently disintegrated in mid-air” after being launched at 6:21 a.m., the army said in a statement, in which it acknowledged that several attempts were made to intercept the launch when it reached the country’s airspace and that they are still investigating the attack. They later added that they did hit the missile, but that they did not destroy it. Alarms began to alert residents of the possibility of an impact so they could take cover and nine people had to be treated for minor injuries as they ran to shelters, according to local emergency services.
Some of the missile fragments hit a train station in Modiin, in the Tel Aviv urban belt, and a small fire broke out in an open area near Lod, another town in the area where debris apparently also fell, requiring the intervention of firefighters.
Netanyahu, as on previous occasions, has issued a threat in response to the Yemeni guerrillas, which, like Hamas and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, are backed by Iran. “The Houthis should already know that we demand a high price for any attempt to harm us,” he said at the start of the weekly meeting of the executive, referring to the intense bombardment that Israeli F-15 fighter planes carried out on the Yemeni city of Hodeida on July 20, through whose port they claim the Tehran regime sends weapons.
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The day before, a rebel drone hit a building in Tel Aviv, killing one of its inhabitants and wounding four. It is, so far, the only death the Yemenis have caused during the conflict in Israel. It was the first time they managed to reach the heart of the country. Previously, in March, another missile hit the southern tip, near the city of Eilat, on the shores of the Red Sea, without causing any casualties.
The leader of the rebels, Abdel Malek al Houthi, has warned in a speech that they intend to continue launching attacks. “The operation that our forces carried out today with an advanced Yemeni missile is part of the fifth stage of the escalation. What is to come will be of greater dimensions,” he announced. “Our operations will continue as long as Israel maintains its attacks and its siege on Gaza. We will continue to coordinate with the resistance in Gaza,” he added, referring to Hamas.
Shortly after acknowledging Sunday’s attack, the guerrilla leaders published a pamphlet in which they recommend that the inhabitants of Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, withdraw to a “humanitarian zone” in the Negev desert in the south of the country, because they consider this city on the Mediterranean coast to be a combat zone.
The map that the Houthis have spread on social media with this threat and that has appeared in some Israeli media replicates those that the army of this country disperses in different areas of Gaza to force the population to move to one place or another as they carry out troop movements on the ground or bombings from the air. This Sunday, precisely, is the first time that these printed papers with instructions from Israeli troops have reached Lebanese territory. The army argues that they were launched by a unit that did not have permission to do so and has opened an investigation.
Meanwhile, Hamas, as on previous occasions, congratulated the Houthis for their action. It was a “natural response to the Zionist entity’s aggression against our Palestinian people,” according to a statement. The Palestinian fundamentalist group has already raised to more than 41,000 the number of dead in the Gaza Strip due to attacks by Israeli occupation troops in response to the murder of some 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 250 on October 7.
From Iran, the Ayatollahs’ regime also welcomed the Yemeni attack. “Today’s operation against Tel Aviv was carried out with a new hypersonic ballistic missile” that “the enemy’s defence systems failed to intercept,” said a statement from the official Irna news agency. “The missile travelled a distance of approximately 2,040 kilometres in 11 and a half minutes, causing fear and panic among the Zionists,” the statement added.
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