Yemen's Houthi rebels have launched several missiles and drone attacks on Israel as the Palestine-Israel war rages.
The rebels pushing their main benefactor, Iran, deeper into the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip and boosting the prospect of a broader catastrophe erupting.
The Houthis were accused of carrying out an attack earlier this month against Israel by launching missiles and drones over the vital Red Sea shipping waterway, an attack that the US Navy foiled.
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However, Israel said on Tuesday that its fighter aircraft and modern Arrow missile defense system knocked down two salvos of incoming fire hours apart as they approached the country's strategic Red Sea shipping port of Eilat.
In a later military statement, the Houthis, who have seized Yemen's capital, Sanaa, since 2014 as part of that country's disastrous conflict, claimed three assaults against Israel without elaborating on the timeline of the operations or if Tuesday's salvos represented one or two attacks.
Aside from the incident in which the US shot down missiles, there was a mystery explosion Thursday in the Egyptian vacation town of Taba, close to the Israeli border. Six individuals were injured in the bomb, which Egyptian police have not explained.
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Our armed forces launched a large batch of ballistic missiles and a large number of drones at various targets of the Israeli enemy,” Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said in a televised statement. “The Yemeni Armed Forces confirm that this operation is the third operation in support of our oppressed brothers in Palestine and confirm that we will continue to carry out more qualitative strikes with missiles and drones until the Israeli aggression stops.”
Tuesday's attack marked an extremely rare reported in-combat use of Israel's Arrow missile defense system, which intercepts long-range ballistic missiles with a warhead designed to destroy targets while they are in space.
