By Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh
BEN GURION AIRPORT, Israel (Reuters) -A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels towards Israel on Sunday landed near Ben Gurion Airport, the country’s main international airport, sending a plume of smoke into the air and causing panic among passengers in the terminal building.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, who claimed responsibility for the missile strike, have recently intensified missile launches at Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
A senior Israeli police commander, Yair Hetzroni, showed reporters a crater caused by the impact of the missile, which airport authorities said had landed beside a road near a Terminal 3 parking lot.
“You can see the scene right behind us here, a hole that opened up with a diameter of tens of metres and also tens of metres deep,” Hetzroni said, adding that there was no significant damage.
In a statement after the strike, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said: “Whoever harms us will be harmed sevenfold.”
Israel’s Channel 12 News said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would meet security ministers and defence officials on Sunday to discuss a response.
Most missile launches from Yemen have been intercepted by Israel’s missile defence systems, apart from a strike that hit Tel Aviv last year. The military said it was investigating what happened with Sunday’s launch, which caused sirens to be activated across central Israel, including nearby in the major city of Tel Aviv.
A Reuters reporter at the airport, which is located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, heard sirens and saw passengers reacting by running towards safe rooms.
Several people at the airport posted videos filmed on smartphones that showed a plume of black smoke clearly visible nearby, behind parked aircraft and airport buildings. Reuters has not verified the videos.
The Israeli ambulance service said eight people were being taken to hospital, including a man in a mild to moderate condition with injuries to his limbs and two women in a mild condition with head injuries.
U.S. STRIKES ON HOUTHIS
Claiming responsibility for the strike, the Houthis’ military spokesperson Yahya Saree said Israel’s main airport was “no longer safe for air travel”.
A spokesperson for the Israel Airports Authority said takeoffs and landings had resumed and operations at Ben Gurion had returned to normal, after reports of air traffic being halted and access routes to the airport being blocked.
However, flight operations were disrupted due to the missile, according to Ben Gurion’s live air traffic site.
Some flights, including by Air India, TUS Airways and Lufthansa Group, were cancelled. Others, including to U.S. airports Newark and JFK, were delayed by about 90 minutes. A Reuters reporter boarded a flight to Dubai that was on time.
Sunday’s strike came as Israeli ministers were reported to be close to signing off on plans to expand the military operation in Gaza, which resumed in March following a two-month truce, drawing a pledge from the Houthis to hit Israel with more missiles.
Efforts to revive the ceasefire have so far faltered, and U.S. President Donald Trump in March ordered large-scale strikes against the Houthis to reduce their capabilities and deter them from targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The Houthis, who control swathes of Yemen, began targeting Israel and Red Sea shipping in late 2023, during the early days of the war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.
The war was triggered by Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. Israel’s offensive on Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and destroyed much of the enclave.
The U.S. strikes on the rebel group, which have killed hundreds of people in Yemen, have been the biggest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since Trump took office in January.
(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din, Jaidaa Taha, Alexander Cornwell and Steven Scheer;Writing by Estelle Shirbon;Editing by Toby Chopra and Helen Popper)
