Yemen's Houthis Claim Drone Strike on Israel's Tel Aviv

Yemen's Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, has claimed responsibility for a deadly drone strike against Israel's major city of Tel Aviv, with a senior official of the group having revealed to Newsweek its role just prior to the announcement.

Reports first emerged early Friday local time of a massive explosion that rocked the city as Israel remained in engaged in an ongoing war with the Palestinian Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip and faced repeated attacks from other factions of the Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance hailing from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Soon after, evidence of potential unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) debris at the site of the attack quickly spread throughout out local and social media channels.

An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson initially told Newsweek that the IDF was investigating "reports that it was an aerial target" that struck central Tel Aviv. The spokesperson later added that "an initial inquiry indicates that the explosion in Tel Aviv was caused by the falling of an aerial target, and no sirens were activated."

Hours after the news first broke, Ansar Allah military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group was preparing "an announcement of a qualitative military operation," though he did not provide any further details.

Asked if the announcement was connected to the suspected drone strike in Tel Aviv, Ansar Allah Deputy Information Secretary Nasreddin Amer affirmed to Newsweek that was indeed the case.

Shortly afterward, Saree also confirmed publicly that "the specific operation, the details of which will be announced, targeted 'Tel Aviv' in occupied Palestine." He later revealed the weapon used in the operation to be a new drone platform called "Yafa," a likely reference to the ancient port city now part of Tel Aviv, and claimed the UAV "is capable of bypassing interception systems and radars cannot detect it."

Details are still emerging of what could prove to be one of the most subversive attacks to Israel's security since the large-scale Hamas-led attack that took the nation by surprise more than nine months ago. The Israel Police have reported at least one civilian killed in an apartment that appears to have hit by the drone as well as at least seven more people injured.

Responding to Newsweek's question at a briefing held in the aftermath of the strike, an Israeli military official disputed Ansar Allah's description of the UAV's radar-evasive capabilities, saying that the drone did appear on Israeli systems and that it was "human error" that failed to classify it as a threat.

The Israeli military official declined to give further details of the UAV pending an ongoing investigation but described it as "a very big drone that can travel long distances."

"This attack on Israel was a terror attack that was targeting to kill civilians, it did kill a civilian in Israel," the Israeli military official said. "It's part of what we've been dealing with in a multi-front war."

Hours before the blast, Amer told Newsweek that the group's operations "will not stop at all until the aggression against Gaza stops and the siege is completely lifted—this is what we said months ago, and we are still saying, and nothing will happen except only what we say."

In the wake of his revelation of Ansar Allah's role in the strike early Friday, Amer went on to reference the operation in relation to Hamas leadership, particularly Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and Al-Qassam Brigades supreme commander Mohammed Deif, saying on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, "it is as if I can see the broad smile on the face of Deif and Sinwar, may God protect them."

He also took aim at Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has led a military intervention in support of Yemen's internationally recognized government that was ousted from the capital in 2015. Ansar Allah and other Axis of Resistance factions have accused the kingdom and other Arabian Peninsula monarchies of not doing enough to pressure Israel over the war in Gaza.

"Bin Salman, after he wakes up and sees Tel Aviv being bombed: Who did this to our gods?!!" Amer wrote.

With Yemen's civil war quieted by a U.N.-brokered April 2022 ceasefire, Ansar Allah began a campaign of missile and drone strikes against Israel shortly after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict, largely targeting the southern Red Sea port city of Eilat. The long-range offensive was later expanded to include targeting commercial vessels, at least 70 of which have been struck throughout the course of the war.

The attacks have also drawn in U.S. military action, with U.S. warships attempting to intercept Ansar Allah munitions and U.S. warplanes striking the group's positions in Yemen on several occasions. Ansar Allah has also claimed the downing of at least three U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones near Yemen as well as direct attacks on U.S. Navy assets off the country's coast.

The U.S. and a number of its allies and partners have accused Iran of directly supplying Ansar Allah with weapons, an allegation the Islamic Republic has repeatedly denied. Still, Iranian officials have touted their support for Ansar Allah and other Axis of Resistance members, including the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which has also claimed strikes against Israeli cities, and Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has been engaged in an intensifying series of daily tit-for-tat cross-border clashes with Israeli forces.

The worsening Israel-Hezbollah battle has led to growing concerns of an even larger-scale war erupting in the region.

After weeks of warnings shared with Newsweek by Israeli, Iranian and Hezbollah officials, Iranian Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani praised "the synergy and solidarity that has been created among the Axis of Resistance in our region against the Zionists" in an exclusive interview on Monday.

He asserted that "the balance in the region has been in favor of the resistance" since the beginning of the war in Gaza and argued that if Israeli officials "try to expand the war and tensions to other parts of the region, including Lebanon, they will fail in changing this new order."