War

Air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile launched at Israel from Yemen that triggered sirens across central Israel late Monday night, the military said, in the seventh such nighttime attack in less than two weeks.The missile was intercepted before it crossed into Israeli airspace, the military said, and sirens sounded across the center of the country shortly after 11 p.m. for fear of falling debris.There was no major damage as a result of the missile debris, although a large fragment crashed in the Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef neighborhood in the city of Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem.At the scene of the impact on Nahal Hakishon Street, local residents, most of them ultra-Orthodox Jews, crowded around the remains of the Houthi missile.Small children ran around in the rain and women pushed babies in strollers only meters from the fragment as police attempted to keep the crowd back.“This is crazy. This is crazy,” one man kept telling his friend as they stood shoulder to shoulder at the scene.“I was home in my apartment, running to the shelter as soon as I heard the siren with my wife, my mother-in-law and my baby,” Aaron Heideman, a visitor from Teaneck, New Jersey, told The Times of Israel as he stood and stared at the large metal object next to a splintered tree in the middle of the road.“It’s crazy to see with my own eyes that this is real, this is serious. I always have faith in God so I’m not scared but it is surreal,” he added.The Magen David Adom ambulance service said that it did not receive any reports of injuries directly caused by the missile launched from Yemen, although a number of people were being treated for acute anxiety or for minor injuries sustained while running to bomb shelters.
In the central town of Yavne, the ambulance service said a pedestrian was hit by a vehicle and lightly injured while running to shelter. The 18-year-old girl was taken to Kaplan Medical Center with injuries to her chest and limbs.The missile launch also caused brief interruptions at Ben Gurion Airport, the Ynet news site reported, with arrivals and departures briefly halted due to fears of falling debris.Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim Arena where singer-songwriter Moshe Peretz was performing at a Hanukkah concert, thousands of audience members waited out the sirens with their hands above their heads to protect themselves from any flying shrapnel.Seemingly unfazed by the interruption, Peretz continued his performance, briefly changing the lyrics of his song from “Tutim” (strawberries) to “Houthim” (Houthis).The Houthis in Yemen later took responsibility for the missile launch, and a top leader of the Iran-backed group vowed that similar attacks would be forthcoming.“The pounding of the entity (Israel) continues and the support to Gaza continues,” Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the Houthis’ supreme revolutionary committee, said in a post on X after the Israeli military announced the missile interception.
The launch came shortly after Houthi-controlled media in Yemen reported that a US-led coalition had struck targets in the At Tuhayat District, south of Hodeida.The Houthis, a rebel group at the center of Yemen’s civil war that has dedicated itself to the destruction of Israel and Jews, have launched more than 200 missiles and 170 drones at Israel in the past year, according to the Israel Defense Forces.The vast majority did not reach Israel or were intercepted by the military or Israel’s allies in the region.Rocket and drone alert sirens triggered by attacks from Yemen have repeatedly sent millions of Israelis running for shelter in the middle of the night for the past 12 days. In the past month, the group has fired 11 ballistic missiles and at least nine drones at Israel.The Iran-backed group, which is designated as a terrorist organization by several countries including the United States, Canada and the United Arab Emirates, has vowed to keep up the attacks until the end of the war in the Gaza Strip that began on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a devastating attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage to Gaza.Israel has carried out several waves of airstrikes against Houthi infrastructure in Yemen in recent days amid increasingly bellicose threats from the country’s leaders.On Monday, UN Ambassador Danny Danon issued what he called a final warning to the group, and cautioned that they risked the same “miserable fate” as fellow Iranian allies Hamas, Hezbollah and the fallen regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad if they persisted.“Israel will defend its people,” Danon told reporters. “If 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) is not enough to separate our children from terror, let me assure you, it will not be enough to protect their terror from our strengths.”Among the targets struck by Israel in Yemen in recent days were Sanaa International Airport and infrastructure at three Houthi-controlled ports on the country’s west coast.According to sources quoted by the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news outlet on Monday, the ports of Hodeida, Salif and Ras Issa have been out of service ever since the December 18 strikes. Ships anchored at the three ports have been unable to leave as a result, cutting off an essential lifeline for the regime.The ports of Ras Issa and Hodeida are also used to house fuel storage facilities, making them vital economic hubs.In addition to attacking Israel, the Iran-backed Houthis have also carried out repeated missile and drone attacks on some 100 merchant vessels attempting to traverse the Red Sea, forcing many carriers to avoid the key waterway and hamstringing global shipping. The Houthis initially said they were going to attack Israel-linked ships, but few of the vessels targeted had ties to Israel.