TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A drone fired by the Houthi militants in Yemen breached Israel's multilayered air defenses on Sunday and slammed into the country's southern airport, the Israeli military said, briefly shutting down commercial airspace and diverting flights over southern Israel.
One of several Houthi drones launched from Yemen slipped through Israel's defense system and crashed into the passenger terminal at the Ramon International Airport near the resort city of Eilat, the Israeli Airports Authority said, blowing out glass windows, sending smoke plumes billowing and lightly wounding one person.
The damage to Ramon Airport appeared limited and within a couple of hours it reopened as normal flights resumed.
The Houthis claimed responsibility for the strike.
The attack comes days after Israeli strikes on Yemen's rebel-held capital of Sanaa killed the Houthi prime minister and other officials in his Cabinet in a major escalation of the nearly 2-year-old conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in Yemen.
In Gaza City, the Israeli military on Sunday leveled another high-rise tower that housed hundreds of displaced Palestinians and urged people to move south as it intensifies its offensive on the city.
Meanwhile, a breakthrough Israeli Supreme Court decision ruled that Israel was not providing Palestinian detainees in its custody with enough food to ensure basic sustenance. In response to a petition by Israeli human rights groups alleging malnutrition and starvation in Israeli prisons, Israel's highest court ordered the state to “guarantee basic living conditions in accordance with the law" for Palestinians in its detention facilities.
It marked a rare Israeli court ruling against the security establishment over its conduct in the Israel-Hamas war.
Houthi rebels escalate attacks on Israel
After Israel's targeted killing of Houthi Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi last Thursday, the militants vowed to escalate their attacks targeting Israel and merchant ships navigating the vital trade route through the Red Sea off Yemen.
The Houthis said that Sunday's attack on Ramon Airport — some 19 kilometers (12 miles) from Eilat on Israel's southern tip — “successfully achieved its objectives.”
Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said the group had fired eight drones at Israel and “will escalate its military operations and will not back down from its support for Gaza.” He warned that airports in Israel “are unsafe and will be continuously targeted.”
The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had intercepted three Houthi attack drones near Israel's border with Egypt but was investigating why it failed to identify the fourth drone that hit Ramon Airport as a hostile aircraft. As a result, the drone did not set off air raid sirens.
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency rescue service said it treated a 63-year-old man for light shrapnel wounds.
The Houthis have stepped up their aerial attacks on Israel in recent months, including by deploying warheads with cluster munitions that scatter smaller bomblets over a large area and evade Israeli air defenses.
Saying that they were acting in solidarity with the Palestinians, the Houthis began firing missiles and drones into Israel after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, ignited the Israeli military’s devastating campaign in Gaza. Hamas militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted over 250 in the attack.
While frequent, the aerial attacks from Yemen have not caused significant damage in Israel. But in rare cases they have managed to hit strategic targets like airports.
Before Sunday's assault, the most damaging Houthi attack was in May, when a Houthi missile struck near Israel’s main Ben Gurion Airport, prompting many international airlines to cancel flights to Tel Aviv for months.
Israel destroys another high-rise in Gaza City
The Israeli military said it razed another high-rise building in Gaza City on Sunday, shortly after military spokesperson Avichay Adraee ordered the evacuation of people from Al-Ra’iya Tower, a seven-story building in a southern Gaza City neighborhood, and from nearby tents.
It's the third Gaza City high-rise leveled in as many days as Israel ramps up its offensive to take control of what it portrays as the last remaining Hamas stronghold, urging Palestinians to flee parts of Gaza City for a designated humanitarian zone in the territory’s south.
Israel said the building targeted on Sunday had been used by Hamas for military and intelligence-gathering activities. Hamas denied those accusations, calling it “a false pretext meant to justify bombing residential blocks.”
It was unclear how many people had been killed or wounded in the attack.
Earlier Sunday, officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City reported that Israeli strikes on a school where displaced people were sheltering and on tents and apartment buildings killed at least 13 Palestinians, including six children and three women.
The Israeli military said it was targeting militants near the school and had warned civilians to evacuate.
Over 64,000 people have been killed since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. It says that more than half of the casualties are women and children.
Netanyahu pledges to continue Gaza City assault
Despite domestic and international opposition, Israel announced a full-scale ground offensive on Gaza City last month. Aid workers warn it would exacerbate a humanitarian crisis for the hundreds of thousands of civilians sheltering there, many of them in bombed-out buildings and makeshift tents.
Thousands of Israeli demonstrators flooded the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Saturday to call for a comprehensive truce and to protest the planned invasion, which they fear will further imperil the roughly 20 hostages — out of the 48 still in Gaza — thought to be alive.
Defying those calls, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Sunday to press ahead with the assault on Gaza City as negotiations for a ceasefire with Hamas remain at a stalemate.
“Our effort in Gaza against the last (Hamas) strongholds, the last important stronghold, Gaza City, is part of our effort to complete the dismantling of the Iranian axis’ chokehold,” Netanyahu told his weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
He brushed off international criticism, saying he'd prefer “a victory over our enemies” more than one “over the negative propaganda against us.”
Netanyahu claimed that over 100,000 Palestinians have heeded the military's calls to evacuate Gaza City ahead of the operation, a figure disputed by international organizations. The United Nations has reported just 41,000 people out of the city's population of 1 million leaving over the last month.
Many Palestinians say they're too wounded, weak or exhausted from relocating so many times to uproot themselves again for jam-packed, increasingly unsanitary encampments in the south unprepared to handle the influx. They argue there are no guarantees of safety even in the humanitarian zone if past Israeli strikes are any indication.
“Every time we move to a place, we get displaced from it,” said Shireen Al-Lada', who fled south from eastern Gaza City after her house in the once-bustling urban neighborhood of Zeitoun was destroyed.
Others, like Ahmad Mousa from Gaza City, reluctantly returned to the combat zone in the north after scouring the overcrowded humanitarian zone for shelter in vain.
“They said to come to the south, I went around the south and I found no space," he said. “We brought everything but where should we stay?”
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Magdy reported from Cairo.
