Missile fired by Yemen's Houthis lands near Israel's main airport

A missile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels toward 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.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate. "We attacked in the past, we will attack in the future," he said in a video circulated by his office.

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 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 the major city of Tel Aviv last year.

IDF investigating missile attack

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it was investigating.

"Today [Sunday], at approximately 9:18 a.m., the IDF identified the launch of a missile from Yemen toward Israeli territory. According to protocol, sirens were sounded in a number of areas in Israel," the military said.

"Several attempts were made to intercept the missile. A hit was identified in the area of Ben Gurion Airport."

A Reuters reporter at the airport, which is located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, heard sirens and saw passengers reacting by running toward safe rooms.

Several people at the airport posted videos filmed on cellphones 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 that operations at Ben Gurion had returned to normal, after reports of air traffic being halted and access routes to the airport being blocked.

Flight operations were disrupted due to the missile, according to Ben Gurion's live air traffic site.

Several airlines, including Lufthansa, Delta, ITA Airways and Air France, said they had cancelled flights to and from Tel Aviv, some of which had been scheduled for Monday or Tuesday.

Sunday's strike came hours before Israel's army chief, Eyal Zamir, said the military had issued orders to call up tens of thousands of reservists to enhance and expand the operation in Gaza.

Israel's bombardment campaign on Gaza resumed in March after it said it wanted to extend the first phase of a 42-day ceasefire agreement with Hamas rather than continue with the original deal and move to second-phase talks, which was favoured by Hamas. That drew 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 swaths 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 some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's offensive on Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and destroyed much of the enclave, Palestinian health authorities say.

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.