A large explosion tore through the streets of central Tel Aviv early on Friday morning, raining down shards of shrapnel and injuring at least 10 people.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the drone strike.
Israel’s emergency response service said people were being treated for their injuries, while a 50-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene.
Local police in Tel Aviv said that the blast sounded at about 3.10am on Friday, reverberating to nearby cities and physically injuring at least 10 people.
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Tel Aviv district commander Peretz Amar said officers could not locate the point of contact, suggesting the explosion occurred in the air.
“The force of the explosion caused damage that is not great but is spread over a large area. At the moment we don’t know what the object was,” Mr Amar said.
Israel’s military said they were reviewing the explosion and increasing air patrols after the incident which Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai on X, formerly Twitter, called a drone strike.
It was not immediately clear how the strike evaded Israel’s air defences or how Israel might respond, but the strike did hit hours after Israel’s military confirmed an air strikes had killed a Hizbullah commander and other militants in southern Lebanon.
Yahya Sare’e, the Houthis’ spokesperson, said in a statement on X that the strike was made in retaliation to the war in Gaza and had hit one of many of the group’s targets.
The Houthis claimed that their newest drones can bypass Israel’s aerial defence systems. However, a spokesperson for Israel’s military said on Friday that the explosive-laden drone had been identified on Thursday and attributed the hit to “human error”.
The military’s assessment of aerial threats has not changed because, the military said, Israel’s adversaries have attempted such strikes for months.
“It was a terror attack that was targeted to kill civilians in Israel,” the Israeli spokesperson said.
Yemen’s Houthis have repeatedly launched drones and missiles toward Israel throughout the nine-month-long war in sympathy with Hamas.
Until Friday, all were intercepted by either Israel or western allies with forces stationed in the region.
The country has so far not made attacks on the Houthis, allowing its allies instead to take the lead as it focuses its efforts on the war in Gaza and ongoing fighting with Lebanon’s Hizbullah militant group.
The attack on Tel Aviv comes as international mediators continue to hold out hope for a ceasefire agreement, pushing Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would halt fighting and free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.
Like Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthis are backed Iran. Israel for the most part also has avoided a direct confrontation with Iran throughout the war.
Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel during a single incident in April in response to Israel’s alleged assassination of a pair of Iranian generals in Syria at the time.
The war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ October 7th attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 38,600 people, according to the territory’s ministry for health.
The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.
Hamas’ October attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostage. About 120 remain in captivity, with about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities. – AP