The Israeli army said Wednesday morning that it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen towards Israel.
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“A missile that had been launched from Yemen was intercepted before entering Israeli territory,” the Israeli armed forces said on the social network Telegram shortly after 4:30 a.m. local time (2:30 a.m. GMT).
As a precaution against possible falling debris, sirens were triggered after the projectile was fired “in several areas of central Israel”, according to the same source.
On Tuesday, Yemen's Houthi rebels, supported by Iran, claimed responsibility for firing a “Palestine 2 hypersonic ballistic missile” against a military target in central Israel.
The Israeli army, for its part, indicated that it had intercepted a “projectile” coming from Yemen. No injuries were reported, according to Magen David Adom (MDA), the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip triggered on October 7, 2023 by the unprecedented attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil, the Houthis have already launched several attacks against Israel. They claim to act in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Houthis, who control large parts of Yemen, also regularly attack ships linked according to them to Israel, the United States or the United Kingdom in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden, despite strikes carried out by the American army, sometimes with the help of the British army.
Following a ballistic missile launch that Israeli forces failed to intercept during the night from Friday to Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Parliament on Monday that he had asked the army to “destroy the infrastructure” of the Yemeni rebels “because anyone who tries to attack us must be hit with force”.
