Drone Blast in Tel Aviv: One Israeli Killed, Four Injured

July 19, 2024

by: Charles Bybelezer ~ JNS

Friday, 19 July 2024 | An Israeli man was killed and four were wounded overnight Thursday when what the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] described as an “aerial target” exploded in a residential neighborhood in central Tel Aviv.

During the search of a building, Magen David Adom emergency medics found the lifeless body of a man in his 50s with “penetrating injuries” and determined the fatality was caused by the blast.

Medics also treated a woman in her 20s and man in his 30s for shrapnel wounds at the scene before evacuating them to Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center’s Ichilov Hospital.

Two others were wounded either by shrapnel or the shockwave of the explosion. Four additional people were being treated at hospitals for anxiety.

The explosion occurred just after 3:00 a.m. local time in the area of Ben Yehuda Street, a few blocks away from the US diplomatic mission in the heart of the coastal city.

A US official said the embassy branch office was not damaged and no American citizens were hurt, Axios reported.

Footage from the scene appeared to show an armed drone striking or exploding over a building on the corner of Shalom Aleichem Street.

“An initial inquiry indicates that the explosion in Tel Aviv was caused by the falling of an aerial target,” the IDF stated.

The military subsequently announced that the drone had been detected by air defense systems but was not intercepted due to human error.

Accordingly, no sirens were activated in Tel Aviv ahead of the attack.

The Israel Air Force “increased its air patrols in order to protect Israeli airspace,” added the IDF.

A spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi terrorists claimed responsibility for the “high-quality” attack using an advanced UAV dubbed “Jaffa.”

On Monday, US Central Command said that the Houthis had attacked an Israeli tanker, carrying vegetable oil from Russia to China in the Red Sea, multiple times in 24 hours.

In March, a cruise missile launched by the Yemeni terrorists hit an open area near the southern resort city of Eilat. The incident marked the first time that a Houthi missile penetrated Israeli territory.

In many similar attacks since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, IDF air defenses managed to shoot down the projectiles over the Red Sea.

Posted on July 19, 2024

Source: (This article was originally published by the Jewish News Syndicate on July 19, 2024. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images/jns.org