Houthis Claim Responsibility for Deadly Tel Aviv Explosion

Israel’s military says it’s investigating why it missed the drone that hit Tel Aviv.

“We are investigating why we did not identify it, attack it and intercept it,” Admiral Hagari said.

The Israeli military said the drone had likely flown from Yemen, where the Houthis are based, before approaching Tel Aviv from the coast. Video posted on X and verified by The New York Times shows what appears to be a unmanned aerial vehicle approaching west of Tel Aviv, followed by a blast at the location of the strike.

The two sides offered differing accounts of the type of drone used in the attack.

Nasruddin Amer, a Houthi spokesman, said in an interview that the drone, called Yaffa, had been fully manufactured in Yemen and that it had not previously been used for direct operational purposes. He said the drone bore technologies that made it difficult to detect.

But Admiral Hagari told reporters that the drone was a Samad-3, an Iranian model, that had been adapted for long-distance flight. He denied that it had stealth capabilities that enabled it to evade Israeli surveillance.

Mr. Amer said that the attack was a response to “an escalation in massacres against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” and that the Houthis would halt their assaults only when the war in Gaza ends and Israel’s blockade of the enclave is lifted. He added that Iran was not involved in the decision to carry out the attack on Tel Aviv, but he said the Houthis had updated the Iranians afterward.

Asked whether Israel would respond to Friday’s attack, Admiral Hagari said it would first work to fully assess the situation.

Iran-backed militants across the Middle East have fired masses of rockets and drones at Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack triggered Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza. Israel has intercepted most of them, leaving central Israel mostly unscathed in recent months — until Friday, when the explosive-laden drone struck the building just after 3 a.m.

Since November, the Houthis have also been attacking ships along a vital route in the Red Sea in what they have described as a campaign in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Admiral Hagari said that dozens of drones had been launched at Israel from Yemen since the war with Hamas began in October, most of which were intercepted by American or Israeli forces.

Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, has launched thousands of strikes on northern Israel since the start of the war, many of which Israel’s antimissile defenses have thwarted. Israel has also launched thousands of strikes on Lebanon in that period. Over 150,000 people have fled border towns in both countries, with little prospect of returning home.

Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv, said the city was on heightened alert.

“The war is still here, and it is hard and painful,” he said on social media, referring to Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Ronen Bergman contributed reporting.

The world’s top court is set to weigh in on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

In January, the court ordered Israel to restrain its attacks in Gaza, and in May it ordered the country to “immediately” halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza.

The U.N. General Assembly in 2022 asked the court for its opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation” of the territories, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967. The court held hearings in February at the Peace Palace in The Hague.

Israel did not appear at that session but filed a submission rejecting the validity of the proceedings as biased. The Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, told the court that Israel had subjected Palestinians to decades of discrimination, leaving them with the choice of “displacement, subjugation or death.”

Over the course of several days, representatives of more than 50 countries, an unusually high number for the court, addressed the hearings. Most sided with the Palestinian representatives. But a few speakers at the court, including those from the United States, Britain and Hungary — among Israel’s traditional allies — sided with Israel.

A U.S. State Department official argued before the court that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians were determined by its “very real security needs.”

One focal point of Friday’s opinion will likely be Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — both the officially promoted expansion of settlements for Israeli citizens on Palestinian territory as well as the government’s tolerance of violent land grabs by settlers.

Every Israeli government has allowed some Israeli construction in the territories, but the Netanyahu government has expanded the program and announced plans for thousands of new housing units. More than 400,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank since 1967.

Residents in the drone strike area describe ‘a crazy reality.’

Thinking that maybe an air-conditioning unit had fallen onto it, he and his wife ran out with a fire extinguisher and a hose. They were confused to see so many other onlookers there, too.

“We didn’t understand why the whole neighborhood came out to the streets because of a fallen AC unit,” Mr. Afek said. “But slowly, we began to hear buzz about a drone strike.”

The attack killed at least one person and wounded several others, the authorities said. The body of a 50-year-old man was found in a nearby apartment building as emergency workers combed through the area, Zaki Heller, a spokesman for Israel’s national emergency service, said in a statement. The man was found in his apartment and had shrapnel injuries, according to the Tel Aviv police.

The police described the wounded as “lightly injured.”

By late morning, the glass shards and debris had mostly been cleaned up from the streets.

Holding a roll of tape, Naor Vilner, 32, the manager of a nearby CrossFit studio, was busy taping plastic sheets over its shattered windows.

He recounted hearing a loud explosion from his apartment and tried to go back to sleep. But when he saw a photo sent around in neighborhood WhatsApp groups of a drone’s wing, he determined there had been a strike and went to the studio to inspect the damage.

“Hopefully we’ll be open on Sunday with this behind us,” Mr. Vilner said, “but of course it can’t completely be behind us. It’s a crazy reality.”

Shahar Dubb, 20, a displaced resident from Kiryat Shmona, a town near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, expressed frustration over people’s reaction to the strike in Tel Aviv.

“I see people in a hubbub, but I ask myself: What’s the uproar?” said Ms. Dubb, who lives with her mother in a cramped hotel room less than a mile from the strike zone. “This happens every day.”

Ms. Dubb’s hometown has been evacuated for nine months and regularly comes under Hezbollah drone and rocket fire.

“People here live in a bubble,” she said of Tel Aviv. “They don’t realize what’s happening in the north.”

Britain says it’s restoring funding to the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians.

The previous Conservative government had suspended funding after Israel accused a dozen employees of UNRWA of being involved in the Hamas-led attacks that killed about 1,200 Israeli civilians last October. Israel claimed that many other workers at the agency were members of terrorist groups, but has not produced evidence to support those broader charges.

“I was appalled by the allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks, but the U.N. took these allegations seriously,” said Mr. Lammy, who was appointed foreign secretary on July 5, a day after the Labour Party’s landslide election victory over the Conservatives.

After an independent review, Mr. Lammy said that Britain had been “reassured” that UNRWA was “strengthening its procedures, including on vetting.”

Britain had joined the United States and a dozen other countries in suspending the funding. But the humanitarian situation in Gaza has become ever more dire, and last week 118 countries publicly declared their support for the agency at the United Nations, with the secretary general, Antonio Guterres, declaring, “There is no alternative to UNRWA.”

Mr. Lammy, who recently returned from a visit to Israel, repeated his demand for an immediate cease-fire and criticized Israel over the shortage of aid entering Gaza. “Israel promised a flood of aid back in April but imposes impossible and unacceptable restrictions,” he said. But his statement captured the political pressures that his government is likely to face regarding the conflict.

He did not signal that Britain would drop the previous government’s objection to arrest warrants sought by the International Criminal Court for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and for the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Mr. Lammy said his government would not act on the matter before the results of the court’s legal review on whether Israel was complying with international human rights law.

That reluctance has drawn criticism from many members of the Labour Party, who want tougher action against Israel. Some Labour politicians were damaged in the election by the party’s cautious approach to the conflict. Jonathan Ashworth, a Labour figure who would probably have been named to a cabinet post, unexpectedly lost his seat to a pro-Palestinian activist.

Mr. Lammy’s support of UNRWA was widely welcomed in Parliament, though one senior Conservative lawmaker voiced opposition. “UNRWA schools have been repeatedly used by terrorists to both store weapons and launch attacks,” said Richard Holden, a former deputy chairman of the party, “and over 100 UNRWA staff have had links to terrorist groups in the region.”

Juliette Touma, an UNRWA spokeswoman, called the decision to resume funding a “very positive and welcome announcement,” adding that the agency “needs every penny as part of its humanitarian response in Gaza.”

She said that UNRWA had no way to verify accusations about the use of its facilities by armed groups but said it had denounced the reports and called for investigations. U.N. investigators are still examining Israel’s accusations that some UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 attacks, she added.

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

U.S. Treasury sanctions seek to financially cripple the Yemeni rebels attacking Red Sea shipping.

Brian Nelson, under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement that the new sanctions were intended to undermine the Houthis’ “ability to further destabilize the region and threaten international commerce.”

“Today’s action underscores our focus on disrupting the Houthis’ sprawling network of financial facilitators, shell companies and vessels that enables the primary source of funding for the group’s destabilizing activities,” he said.

The sanctions are being imposed on a far-flung group of individuals and businesses, reflecting the Houthis’ global ties. Among the targeted individuals are a Malaysian and Singaporean national and a Chinese national who the United States said have “facilitated illicit shipments and engaged in money laundering” for the Houthi network.

Commercial shipping companies have been struggling to contend with the effects of the Houthi strikes, which have been rippling across the industry. On Wednesday, the shipping company Maersk said disruptions had extended far beyond the trade routes directly affected by the attacks, which lie between Asia and Europe, with shippers’ forced reroutings leading to congestion, backlogs and delays at ports on alternate routes.

The Houthi attacks have significantly raised shipping costs worldwide. While container costs have not reached pandemic highs, when supply chains were snarled across the globe, the average price to ship a 40-foot container across eight major East-West trade routes has risen more than 285 percent since last year, according to Drewry, a British maritime consultancy that tracks container costs.

The Treasury last month imposed sanctions on Sa’id al-Jamal, identifying him as a Houthi financier based in Iran who directed “a network of front companies and vessels that smuggle Iranian fuel, petroleum products and other commodities to customers throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia” to fund the Houthis.

On Thursday, the Treasury added sanctions against what it called “seemingly innocuous” companies forming part of the same matrix — including an insurer, an energy trading company and a ship manager, as well as vessels under its management — saying the network continued “to provide tens of millions of dollars in revenue to the Houthis in Yemen.” The designated entities, based in Thailand, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, operate around the world.

The Houthis on Tuesday released a video that they said showed an attack on a commercial ship in the Red Sea the previous day. The rebel group targeted two vessels on Monday, according to the United States Central Command.

In a post on social media, the Central Command said on Monday that it had destroyed five Houthi drones in the previous 24 hours, citing a rationale repeated across such announcements: that the targets “presented an imminent threat to U.S., coalition forces, and merchant vessels in the region.”