Tel Aviv: Israel threatened retaliation on Friday 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 the US embassy annex.
The attack drew condemnation from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and an appeal for “maximum restraint” to avoid “further escalation in the region”.
The pre-down strike came just hours before Israel suffered another blow, with the UN Supreme Court ruling that its occupation of the Palestinian territories was “illegal” and needed to end as soon as possible.
The advisory opinion of the Hague-based International Court of Justice is not binding, but it comes amid growing international condemnation of Israel's handling of the war against Hamas in Gaza.
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the court decision a “victory for justice”. Hamas said it “needs the international system to take immediate steps 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: “Jews are not occupiers of their own land.”
The Houthis are among Iran-backed armed groups across the Middle East that have claimed drone and missile attacks on Israel in retaliation for the Gaza war.
The group, which controls large swathes of Yemen, including most of its Red Sea coast, has previously claimed attacks on Israeli cities including Ashdod, Haifa and Eilat, but Friday's strike appeared to be the first to breach Israel's sophisticated air defenses.
The Houthis have launched a new drone in Tel Aviv “named Yafa, which is capable of bypassing the enemy's interception system,” their spokesman Yahya Sari said.
An Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said “very large drones that can travel long distances” were used in the attack at 3:12 a.m. (0012 GMT).
He said the drone was detected but did not raise the alarm in time due to “human error”, and it crashed into an apartment building.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel believed the drone used was Iranian-made and upgraded, capable of reaching Tel Aviv at least 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) from Yemen.
Medical services said one civilian died and four were “moderately” injured.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has vowed revenge.
“The security system will decisively and shockingly settle scores with anyone who tries to harm the State of Israel, or sends terrorism against it,” he said in a comment posted on the social media platform X.
In grainy security camera footage, what appeared to be a drone was followed by an explosion that shook the building and set off car alarms.
The explosion occurred about 100 meters (yards) from the US embassy annex, said an AFP journalist, who saw broken windows lining the street with apartment blocks.
“It woke me up because the vibration was like a 747 (jet) coming in,” said Kenneth Davis, an Israeli who was staying at a hotel across the street from the building.
“And then the explosion … blew up everything in the room,” he told AFPTV.
Since November, the Houthis have also carried out dozens of drone and missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden that they claim belong to Israel.
The U.S. and Britain launched an airstrike campaign in January to deter an attack on the ship.
The Gaza war began with an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that killed 1,195 people, most of them civilians, according to AFP figures based on Israeli data.
The rebels also took 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, 42 of whom the Israeli military claimed to have killed.
Israel's retaliatory campaign killed at least 38,848 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to health ministry figures, in the Hamas-ruled territory, where fighting broke out on Friday.
Residents reported hearing explosions and gunfire between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces in the Tal al-Hawa district of Gaza City.
The war has destroyed much of Gaza's housing and other infrastructure, displacing almost the entire population and leaving food and drinking water scarce.
Many live in unsanitary conditions. Health officials in Gaza and Israel said on Thursday that poliovirus had been found in sewage samples from Gaza.
The World Health Organization said on Friday that no cases of the highly contagious disease had been detected in Gaza so far.
