(Bloomberg) -- A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthis reached central Israel, setting off sirens from the outskirts of Tel Aviv to the Jerusalem foothills, and partially broke apart in mid-air after it was shot at, the Israeli military said.
The Iranian-aligned rebels, whose long-range attacks on Israel in solidarity with Hamas’ almost year-old war against it from Gaza have mostly been intercepted over the Red Sea, said the missile they used on Sunday was new and hypersonic. They didn’t elaborate.
It marked the deepest reach yet for a missile launched from Yemen - some 2,000 km (1,240 miles) away from Israel - by the Houthis, who in July managed to guide an explosives-laden drone into Tel Aviv, killing a local man. The following day, Israel retaliated with a counterstrike on Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeida.
“The Houthis should already have been aware that we exact a heavy price for any attempt to attack us,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “Anyone who needs a reminder is welcome to visit Hodeida.”
The military said both the high-altitude Arrow interceptor and the short-range Iron Dome interceptor were repeatedly activated against Sunday’s missile and that their performance was under review.
The conclusion of a review of the surface-to-surface missile incident “is that there was a hit on the target from an interceptor; as a result of which the target fragmented but was not destroyed,” according to a military official.
Hypersonic missiles can fly at least five times faster than the speed of sound and on a complex trajectory, making them hard to intercept.
In June 2023, Iran went public with what it described as its first domestically-made hypersonic missile. “We have an even better response to any such development,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said at the time, and state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. - the maker of Iron Dome - announced that it was developing a new system to counter hypersonic missiles, called SkySonic.
When reports surfaced in March that the Houthis had acquired hypersonic missiles, Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies was circumspect, noting that “a significant amount of technological infrastructure is required” for such weapons to be successfully fielded. Yemen is among the world’s poorest countries.
According to a US Defense Intelligence Agency study published in February, Iran since 2015 has been providing the Houthis with a variety of missiles. The study named one which would put Israel within range: the Toofan, resembling Iran’s Shahab-3 and carrying an 800 kilogram (1,764-pound) warhead.
The Houthis are part of an Iranian axis alongside Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has also been attacking Israel since the Gaza war erupted in October.
Medics said nine people suffered injuries in Sunday’s early morning rush to shelters as sirens blared in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, in a village near Ben Gurion Airport, and in Modiin, a town half-way to Jerusalem.
Police published pictures of a damaged escalator and shattered glass, saying it was caused by debris from an interceptor missile. The fire department said a blaze was set off in brush-land near the town of Lod, which was under control.
Israeli media carried a photograph of large crater in a field, which they described as having been caused by the Houthi missile. Bloomberg couldn’t immediately verify that the authenticity of the image.
(Adds details on incident from first paragraph.)
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