TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — A rocket fired from Yemen hit an area of Tel Aviv overnight, leaving 16 people slightly injured by shattered glass from nearby windows, the Israeli military said Saturday.
A further 14 people sustained minor injuries as they rushed to shelters when air raid sirens sounded before the projectile hit just before 4 a.m. Saturday, the military said.
The Houthis later issued a statement on their Telegram channel saying they had aimed at a military target, which they did not identify, with a hypersonic ballistic missile.
The attack comes less than two days after a series of Israeli airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebel-held capital, Sanaa, and port city of Hodeida killed at least nine people. The Israeli strikes were in response to a Houthi attack in which a long-range missile hit an Israeli school building. The Houthis also claimed a drone strike targeting an unspecified military target in central Israel on Thursday.
The Israeli military says the Iran-backed Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles and drones during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The Houthis have also been attacking shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden — attacks they say won’t stop until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli strikes Thursday caused “considerable damage” to the Houthi-controlled Red Sea ports “that will lead to the immediate and significant reduction in port capacity,” United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said. The port at Hodeida has been key for food shipments into Yemen in its decade-long civil war.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said both sides’ attacks risk further escalation in the region and undermine U.N. mediation efforts.
Israeli strikes in Gaza claim more lives
In the Gaza Strip on Saturday, mourners held the funerals of 19 people — 12 of them children — killed in Israeli strikes on Friday and overnight.
One strike Friday afternoon hit a residential building in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least seven Palestinians, including five children and one woman, and injuring 16 others, health officials said.
In Gaza City, an Israeli strike on a house overnight killed 12 people, including seven children and two women, according to Ahli hospital where the bodies were taken.
Mourners gathered at the hospital in Gaza City Saturday morning. Women comforted each other as they wept over the bodies before they were carried out of the hospital. One man, stony-faced, cradled a tiny shroud-wrapped body in his arms as he carried it along the funeral procession.
In the Aqsa hospital of Deir al Balah, white body bags containing those killed in Nuseirat were taken from the hospital morgue and loaded onto the back of an open truck to be taken for burial.
Israel faces heavy international criticism over the unprecedented levels of civilian casualties in Gaza and questions about whether it has done enough to prevent them.
Israel says it only strikes militants and blames the Hamas militant group for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in residential areas.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led to the capture of 250 hostages.
Gaza health officials say Israel’s counteroffensive has killed at least 45,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, while Israel says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas combatants.
Hamas has been designated as terror groups by the United States, the U.K. and other Western countries.
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