Yemen’s Houthis claim responsibility for drone attack on Tel Aviv in which one person died

The Israeli military said an initial investigation showed the explosion was caused by “the fall of an aerial target” that did not raise an alarm. It said air patrols had been increased.

The Houthis, who carried out dozens of attacks on ships in the Red Sea during the Gaza war in support of the Palestinians, said their “UAV force” had attacked “one of the most important targets in the occupied Jaffa region, today’s Israeli Tel Aviv.”

The rebels said last Saturday that they would “not hesitate to expand their military operations … until the aggression stops.”

If confirmed, the attack would be the first to cause casualties in Tel Aviv since a rocket attack from Gaza on May 26 wounded one person. In the October 7 attacks that sparked the war, hundreds of rockets were fired at Tel Aviv, but most were intercepted.

Israeli police said they received hundreds of reports of a “powerful explosion” at around 3 a.m. (00:00 GMT).

The explosion hit a building on 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,” police said. He had suffered injuries from grenade fragments.

Magen David Adom’s emergency services said in a statement that they treated a man and a woman in their home and two other injured people on the street. All four were taken to hospital with “relatively minor” injuries, it said.

“It could have been an explosion in the air… We were very lucky,” said Peretz Amar, Tel Aviv’s police chief, adding that “the investigation is still ongoing.”

A Tel Aviv resident told AFP he woke up to the explosion and “everything was shaking.”

Police urged residents to “follow safety instructions and not to approach or touch potentially explosive debris or shrapnel.”

The fire department said it was possible that a drone caused the explosion.

The war in the Gaza Strip began with the attack by Palestinian Hamas fighters on Israel on October 7, in which 1,195 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to an AFP news agency count based on Israeli figures.

The militants also captured 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza. According to the Israeli military, 42 of them are dead.

According to the Ministry of Health, at least 38,848 people were killed in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s military retaliation, again mostly civilians.