Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “exact a heavy price” from Iran-backed Houthis after the Yemen-based terrorist group fired a missile at central Israel.
Air sirens were sounded across Israel on early morning Sunday when a ballistic missile entered the country’s airspace. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in a press release identified the projectile as “a surface-to-surface missile” fired “from Yemen toward Israeli territory.”
The missile fell apart as Israel’s Arrow and Iron Dome aerial defence systems tried to intercept it. The Houthi “missile most likely fragmented in mid-air,” the IDF said.
Parts of the missile fell a few miles south-east of Ben Gurion airport, outside Tel Aviv. The falling debris landed in “an open area near Ben-Shemen, some six kilometers from Ben-Gurion Airport,” the Jerusalem Post noted. Some shrapnel from the missile fell on homes and buildings in central Israel, social media posts suggest. No casualties were reported.
The Israeli news website YNET reported the attempted Houthi missile strike:
According to the military, the missile broke apart in midflight, and the aerial defenses intercepted parts of it. “Several interception attempts were made by the Arrow and Iron Dome Aerial Defense Systems, and their results are under review,” the IDF said adding that in one area near a train station in central Israel, fallen fragments of the interceptors caused a fire.Sirens blared early in central Israel on Sunday warning of incoming fire. They were heard in the southern parts of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and the central planes, around the Ben Gurion International Airport. The airport authorities said the airport was not impacted in any way and no fragments of an missile or its intercept were detected on the runways.The military said the threat was coming from the East and later added it was launched by the Houthis in Yemen. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Houthis should have learned that Israel would retaliate to any attack, and referring to the bombing of the Hodeida port in Yemen after the Iran-backed Shiite group fired an attack drone that killed one man in Tel Aviv.
The Islamic terror group took responsibility for the failed attack, claiming that it fired a “hypersonic” missile which travelled more than a thousand mile before falling apart over the Israeli airspace. “Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree hailed the missile as a success, saying that a “new hypersonic ballistic missile” targeted Israeli territory. He said it was fired from 2,040 kilometers (1,267 miles) away and flew for 11 and a half minutes,” the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported.
Prime Minister Netanyahu promised a swift and decisive response against the Iranian proxy terror group , the Jerusalem Post reported:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to exact a heavy price from the Houthis for its missile attack against central Israel on Sunday.“This morning, the Houthis launched a surface-to-surface missile from Yemen into our territory,” Netanyahu told his government during its weekly meeting.“They should have known by now that we exact a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” he stated.“Those who need a reminder in this matter are invited to visit the port of Hodeidah,” Netanyahu said in a reference to an Israeli reprisal attack in July.“Anyone who attacks us will not escape,” Netanyahu said, explaining that Hamas has already learned this.
Sunday’s attack comes after Houthis in mid-July carried out a deadly drone strike on Tel Aviv, killing a 50-year-old man. Israel in retaliation struck the Houthi terrorist stronghold in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah in western Yemen.
The Yemen-based jihadist group unleashed a campaign of terror against Israel after the October 7 attack, firing hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel and attacking Israeli and Western commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The IDF on Sunday targeted another Hamas terrorist base inside a former Gaza school. “A short while ago, with the direction of IDF and ISA intelligence, the IAF conducted a precise strike on a Hamas command and control center embedded inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Raazi El Shua’ School in Beit Hanoun,” the Israeli military said in a press statement Sunday,
The terrorist site was being used to fire rockets at southern Israeli towns and cities. “The command and control center was used by Hamas terrorists as an operational hideout, as well as a place to plan and carry out rocket and missile attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel in recent weeks,” the IDF added,
The anti-terror strike came a day after Israeli Air Forces I(IDF) on Saturday destroyed a Hamas weapons factory located near another school in northern Gaza.
The Israeli armed forces undertook all possible measures to minimize civilian casualties as Hamas systematically places its terrorist infrastructure in humanitarian zones. Israel took “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” the IDF assured.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY