Yemen’s military says it has targeted Tel Aviv with a hypersonic ballistic missile, in a fresh operation against the Israeli regime and in support of the Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Yemeni armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said in a statement on Saturday that the strike was carried out by a “Palestine 2” hypersonic ballistic missile, with the Israeli regime failing to intercept the advanced projectile.
“The missile force of the Yemeni Armed Forces targeted a military position of the Israeli enemy in the occupied area of Jaffa (Tel Aviv) with a hypersonic ballistic missile, type Palestine 2, and the missile struck its target accurately and the defenses and interception systems failed to intercept it,” Saree said.
The anti-Israel strike was conducted “for the oppression of the Palestinian people and in response to the massacres against our people in Gaza, and within the fifth scope of the supportive stages… in retaliation for the Israeli aggression against our country,” the statement added.
Praising the Yemeni people’s confrontation with and defiance of the criminal Israeli enemy, Saree also said the Yemeni Army “salutes the Mujahideen in the Gaza Strip and their ongoing heroic operations against the Israeli enemy and confirms that it will continue to support them until the aggression stops and the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted.”
Earlier in the day, the emergency service in the occupied territories said 16 settlers were injured as the Yemeni missile landed in southern Tel Aviv, with the Israeli military acknowledging the regime’s failure to intercept the projectile.
“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in central Israel, one projectile launched from Yemen was identified and unsuccessful interception attempts were made,” the Israeli military said on its Telegram channel.
The Yemeni armed forces had announced a day earlier the execution of multiple military operations targeting Israeli positions.
Since the onset of the Israeli regime’s war on Gaza on October 7, 2023—after Palestinian resistance movements launched Operation al-Aqsa Storm—Yemen has declared unwavering support for Palestine’s struggle against the occupation. The Yemeni Armed Forces have launched regular strikes against Israel as part of a phased escalation campaign.
The campaign has included a strict maritime blockade of Israeli shipping, effectively preventing vessels from reaching Israeli ports.
Israel has so far killed at least 45,206 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 107,512 others in Gaza.
‘Heart of the Zionist enemy is no longer secure’
Hezam al-Asad, a member of the political bureau of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement, said in a Hebrew-language post on X, “The failure of all Israeli defense systems means that the heart of the Zionist enemy is no longer secure.”
In another, he said, “There is no longer any use for interception systems that cost billions of dollars.”
כבר אין תועלת במערכות יירוט שעולות מיליארדי דולרים. pic.twitter.com/y53bulgr2q
— حزام الأسد (@hezamalasad) December 21, 2024
In an Arabic post, he also wrote, “The enemy is trying to minimize its losses in the media to maintain its military standing and the morale of its settlers. It portrays the areas where the interceptor missiles fell as targets hit by [our] missiles.”
Israeli analysts also acknowledged that the Israeli regime is incapable of confronting Yemen and lacks intelligence-based readiness to go to war with the country’s armed forces.
They said the Yemeni army had since the start of the war in Gaza fired more than 200 missiles and launched more than 170 drones at the Israeli-occupied territories.