Tel Aviv: Israel threatened retaliation on Friday after a drone claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels strayed past Israel's vaunted air defenses and killed a civilian in a Tel Aviv apartment building near the U.S. embassy annex.
The attack was condemned by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who appealed for “maximum restraint to avoid further escalation of tensions in the region”.
The pre-dawn strike came hours before Israel was dealt another blow, when the UN's top court ruled that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory was “illegal” and that it must end the occupation as soon as possible.
The advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice in The Hague is non-binding, but comes amid growing international criticism of Israel's handling of its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' office hailed the court's ruling as a “victory for justice.” Hamas said it “prioritized the international system over the imperative to take immediate action to end the occupation.”
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has overseen a massive expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, has insisted that “Jews are not occupiers of their own land.”
The Houthis are one of several Iran-backed militant groups across the Middle East that have claimed drone and missile attacks on Israel in retaliation for the Gaza war.
The group, which controls most of Yemen and the Red Sea coast, has previously claimed attacks on Israeli cities including Ashdod, Haifa and Elat, but Friday's airstrikes appeared to be the first to penetrate Israel's sophisticated air defenses.
The Houthis launched a new drone called the Yafah, which can bypass enemy interception systems, at Tel Aviv, their spokesman Yahya Sari said.
An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 3:12 a.m. (0012 GMT) attack involved a “very large drone that can travel long distances.”
He said the drone was detected but due to “human error” the alarm did not sound in time, causing it to crash into the apartment building.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel believes the drones used were manufactured and upgraded in Iran and can reach Tel Aviv from Yemen, which is at least 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) away.
Medical services said one civilian was killed and four others suffered “relatively minor” injuries.
Defense Minister Yoav Galant vowed revenge.
“The security system will punish in a decisive and shocking manner anyone who seeks to harm the State of Israel or sends terror attacks against the State of Israel,” he said in a comment posted on social media platform X.
Blurry security camera footage showed what appeared to be a drone buzzing, followed by an explosion that shook the building and set off car alarms.
An AFP reporter who saw broken windows on a street lined with apartment buildings said the blast occurred about 100 metres (yards) from the US embassy annex.
“I woke up to a vibration that sounded like a 747 coming in,” said Kenneth Davis, an Israeli staying in a hotel across the street from the building.
“And then there was an explosion… and everything in the room was blown away,” he told AFPTV.
Since November, Houthi rebels have carried out dozens of drone and missile attacks targeting ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, attacks they say are linked to Israel.
The United States and Britain launched air strikes in January to suppress attacks on ships.
The Gaza war was sparked by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which left 1,195 people, most of them civilians, dead, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also took 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, and the Israeli army said 42 of them were killed.
As fighting intensified in Hamas-ruled areas on Friday, Israeli retaliatory strikes killed at least 38,848 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to Health Ministry figures.
Residents reported hearing clashes between Palestinian fighters and Israeli troops in Gaza City's Tal al-Hawa district, as well as explosions and artillery fire.
The war has destroyed much of the Gaza Strip's homes and other infrastructure, displacing virtually all of its residents and leaving them without food and water.
Many people live in unsanitary conditions. Health authorities in Gaza and Israel said Thursday that poliovirus was detected in sewage samples from Gaza.
The World Health Organization said Friday that no cases of the highly contagious disease have been found in the Gaza Strip so far.
