Nine people were injured as they ran to shelters, after air raid sirens sounded in central Israel Sunday morning. A ballistic missile launched from Yemen crossed into Israel, landing in an open field outside Tel Aviv, the Israel Defense Forces said.
The sirens were the first in the region in months, and included Israel’s Ben Gurion international airport in Tel Aviv, where local media showed footage of people racing to shelters. The airport’s website says it has now returned to normal operations.
Video seen by NBC News and verified by Reuters showed a fire in a rural area near to Tel Aviv, with smoke billowing from a crater in the ground as firefighters tackled the blaze.
Other local news reports showed one man taking cover under a table inside a train, and images of what appeared to be fragments of a missile or interceptor landing on an escalator of a train station in in the town of Modiin, about 20 miles southeast of Tel Aviv.
There are no reports of deaths or serious damage. Israel’s emergency services the injured people were in « mild condition » and being treated at nearby hospitals.
The IDF originally said that a « surface-to-surface missile was identified crossing into central Israel from the East and fell in an open area. »
It later said that the missile was launched from Yemen, adding that the result of an interception was « under review. »
In a statement issued on Sunday, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack, and said that Israel should « expect more strikes. » Sunday’s missile covered a distance of 2040 kilometers in 11-and-a-half minutes, the statement said, and was aimed at a « military target » in Jaffa, in southern Tel Aviv.
The group said they would continue strikes in retaliation for Israel’s attack on the Houthi-controlled port city of Al Hudaydah in July, and to « force the enemy to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people. »
“This is the beginning,” Houthi leader Nasr Al-Din Amer told Al-Arabi TV on Sunday.
Israel and Houthi rebels have repeatedly fired retaliatory strikes at one another since the start of the nearly year-long war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which has rippled across the region.
The Houthis see their campaign against Israel and commercial shipping in the Red Sea as part of an allied defense of Palestinians in Gaza.
In July, a Houthi drone penetrated Israel’s air defense system, hitting an apartment building in Tel Aviv, one block from a U.S. Embassy branch office, killing one and injuring at least 10. Israel responded with a series of airstrikes on Houthi controlled areas of Yemen.
The IDF has not said if they have retaliated following the latest strikes.
