A missile fell this Sunday, May 4 on the grounds of Tel Aviv International Airport after a Yemen shot, causing a brief interruption of air traffic and the threats of Israeli reprisals.
A meeting of the Israeli security firm is scheduled for 7:00 pm local time (6 pm French hour), a government source told the AFP without further details.
The shooting in the missiles was claimed by the hutis rebels who control large sides of Yemen in the war, including the Sanaa capital, more than 1,800 km from the southern border of Israel. “We have pointed to Ben-Gurion airport with a hypersonic ballistic missile that has successfully achieved its goal,” they said in a statement.
According to an AFP photographer on the site, the missile fell into an area planted with trees next to an access ramp for the parking lots of Terminal 3, the most important at the airport, less than a kilometer from the asphalt.
“This is the first time that a missile has also been close to the terminal and landing clues,” a spokesman for the Israeli airport authority told AFP.
Allies of the Islamist Palestinian Movement Hamas, the hutis have claimed dozens of missiles and drones against Israel, including shooting to the airport, from the war in Gaza. Almost all the shots were intercepted.
“We escape from your beautiful”
“What happened this morning had not happened for a long time. Several months ago, we had rockets (fired by Hamas) that had fallen near the airport, but today we escaped it,” an Israeli environment told AFP that worked for a foreign airline.
According to the army, alert sirens sounded in several regions of Israel, where anti -aircraft defenses have taken action, according to the army.
A strong detonation was heard in the morning within terminal 3, said an AFP journalist. Security staff immediately asked passengers to go to shelters. Emergency services reported six injured.
“You can see the area just behind us: a crater has formed there, several tens of meters and deep for several tens of meters,” said the police chief in the center of Israel, Yaïr Hezroni, in a video with the control tower in the background.
Airport authorities have announced the resumption of air traffic after a brief interruption. “The take -offs and landings have normally taken.”
The European air transport group Lufthansa, British Airways and Air India announced the suspension of their flights to Tel Aviv until May 6.
“Seven times stronger”
Defense Minister Israel Katz, threatened to retaliate with the shot of the hutis. “He who attacks us will be hit seven times harder.” Israel has already addressed several huti goals in Yemen.
Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, caused by an unprecedented attack of Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, the hutis have announced attacks against Israel in “solidarity” with the Palestinians.
They also go to the ships that they consider linked to Israel in Yemen, attacks that have led to an intensification of the United States air campaign against the hutis.
After a two -month suspension, the Yemeni rebels resumed attacks against Israel with the resumption of the Israeli offensive in Gaza on March 18.
Sixteen dead in Gaza
On the eve of the security firm meeting, the Israeli media announced that the Government had decided to remember tens of thousands of reservists for an expansion of their offensive in Gaza, where the new strikes killed 16 Palestinians on Sunday, including at least three children according to local help.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says that greater military pressure is the only way to force Hamas to make hostages.
The October 7 attack led to the death of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, most civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures. Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 58 are still held in Gaza, 34 of which were declared dead by the Israeli army.
Israel has swore to destroy Hamas, who took power in Gaza in 2007, and launched a devastating military retaliation campaign that left at least 52,535 dead, mostly civilians in the Palestinian territory, according to figures of the Hamas Ministry of Health considered reliable by the UN.
Source: BFM TV
