Israeli newspaper Haaretz said on Sunday that “Israel's air defenses failed” to destroy the ballistic missile launched from Yemen earlier in the day, although it was an “anticipated” attack, considering that the Yemeni defense minister had issued a warning a day prior.
The Yemeni Armed Forces on Sunday struck a military target in Jaffa area, south of Tel Aviv, with a new hypersonic ballistic missile.
Brigadier General Yahya Saree, the Yemeni army’s spokesman, said the long-range advanced projectile “managed to reach its target, and the enemy’s defense systems failed to intercept and confront it.”
“The explosion itself – occurring only a few kilometers away from Ben-Gurion International Airport – may indicate flaws in Israel's defense systems and raises concerns,” Haaretz said.
A probe by the Israeli air force later confirmed the failure of the regime’s interception systems.
It found that “the interception was a partial one - one of the interceptors struck the missile but failed to destroy it.”
Haaretz warned that if the Yemeni forces “keep firing at the airport, it could exacerbate what is already an aviation and tourism crisis.”
It was the second time the Yemeni forces managed to strike targets deep inside the occupied territories.
Back in July, a drone launched by Yemen hit an area near a US consular facility in Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring 10 others as the Israeli systems failed to intercept the drone.
Since the onset of the war, the Yemeni forces have carried out scores of operations in support of the war-hit Gazans, striking targets throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, in addition to targeting Israeli ships or vessels heading towards ports in the occupied territories.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 41,206 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 95,337 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
AMK/PressTV