TEL AVIV: Israel on Friday threatened retaliation after a drone claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels penetrated its vaunted air defenses and killed a civilian in a Tel Aviv apartment building near a US Embassy annex.
The attack prompted condemnation from UN chief Antonio Guterres and a call for “maximum restraint” to avoid “further escalation in the region.”
The pre-dawn attack came just hours before Israel suffered another blow, a ruling by the United Nations' top court that its occupation of Palestinian territory was “illegal” and must end as soon as possible.
The advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice in The Hague is not binding, but comes at a time when the international community is increasingly condemning Israel's handling of the war against Hamas in Gaza.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' office hailed the court's decision as “a victory for justice.” Hamas said it confronted “the international system with the imperative of immediate action to end the occupation.”
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has overseen a major expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, insisted: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”
The Houthis are one of several Iranian-backed armed groups in the Middle East that have claimed responsibility for drone and missile attacks against Israel in retaliation for the war in Gaza.
The group, which controls large swathes of Yemen, including much of the Red Sea coast, has previously claimed attacks on Israeli cities including Ashdod, Haifa and Eilat, but Friday's attack appears to be the first to breach Israel's sophisticated air defenses.
The Houthis launched a “new drone called 'Yafa' over Tel Aviv, capable of evading enemy interception systems,” their spokesman Yahya Saree said.
An Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the 3:12 a.m. (0012 GMT) attack used a “very large drone capable of traveling long distances.”
He said the drone was detected but that due to “human error” the alarm was not raised in time and it crashed into an apartment building.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel believes the drone used was Iranian-made and upgraded to be able to reach Tel Aviv from Yemen, at least 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) away.
Medical services said one civilian was killed and four people suffered “relatively minor” injuries.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed revenge.
“The security system will settle accounts with all those who seek to harm the State of Israel or send terrorism against it, decisively and surprisingly,” he said in comments posted on the social media platform X.
In grainy security camera footage, the buzz of what appeared to be the drone was followed by an explosion that shook the building and set off car alarms.
The explosion occurred about 100 metres from an annex of the US embassy, said an AFP reporter who saw broken windows along the street lined with apartment blocks.
“It woke me up because the vibration of the sound was like a 747 (jet) approaching,” said Kenneth Davis, an Israeli who was staying in a hotel across the street from the stricken building.
“And then the explosion… everything blew up in the room,” he told AFPTV.
Since November, the Houthis have also carried out dozens of drone and missile attacks against ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, claiming they are linked to Israel.
In January, the United States and Britain launched a campaign of air strikes to deter attacks on shipping.
The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas's 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 who, according to the Israeli military, died.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 38,848 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory, where fighting raged on Friday.
Residents reported hearing clashes between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli army, with explosions and shelling in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City.
The war has destroyed much of Gaza's housing and other infrastructure, leaving virtually the entire population displaced and without food and clean water.
Many live in unsanitary conditions. Health authorities in Gaza and Israel said on Thursday that poliovirus has been detected in sewage samples from Gaza.
The World Health Organization said on Friday that no cases of the highly contagious disease have been detected in Gaza so far.
