Long-Range ‘Yafa’ Beats Multilayered Air Defenses 

TEL AVIV (Dispatches) — A drone launched by Yemen’s armed forces struck Tel Aviv on Friday, leaving one person dead and at least 10 wounded in the group’s first lethal strike into Israeli settlements.
The aerial strike rumbled through the center of the city near the U.S. Embassy, causing shrapnel to rain down and spreading shards of glass over a large radius.
The hit in the biggest city was startling because the drone appeared to have crossed much of the occupied territories through the multilayered air defenses.  
The aircraft exploded in a building lying less than 100 meters away from a U.S. consular facility in the city. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu put off his trip to Washington following the explosion.
The Israeli military said it was investigating what went wrong. Chief spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari sought to whitewash the embarrassment, claiming that the drone was detected by air defenses, but an “error” occurred and “there was no interception”. 
“We are investigating the entire chain,” he said. Another military official blamed “human error.”  
The spokesman for Yemen’s armed forces, Yahya Sare’e, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement published on the social media platform X. He said it was in retaliation for the Israeli war on Gaza s.
Israel’s military identified the drone as a Samad-3 upgraded to travel long distances and said it was believed to have come from Yemen.
The drone hit at around 3:10 a.m., blowing out windows and damaging cars throughout a coastal neighborhood of Tel Aviv and reverberating as far as nearby cities.  
In one building, the Sajiv family swept up the shattered glass of their apartment’s balcony door. Limor Sajiv said they were woken by the sound of a blast. “We had no idea what it was. I mean, we heard missiles before we heard things, this was different, really, really loud,” he said.
People thronged to the area as police helicopters hovered overhead. For many, it reaffirmed feelings of disillusionment with how the military has handled the war since October.
Yossi Nevi, a retired evacuee from Kiryat Shmona, said he was shaken awake in the hotel he lives in. Hearing it was human error, Nevi said, made him lose “all trust in the army, not that I had much after the past nine months.”
Eldad Namdar, who owns a camera store next to the intersection where the drone is believed to have exploded, said he hopes the war ends soon.
“I don’t want this to happen again in six months, I want them to finish this situation until the end,” he said.
The strike hit hours after Israel’s military confirmed it had assassinated a Hezbollah commander and other fighters in southern Lebanon. 
Yemen’s armed forces have routinely claimed responsibility for hitting targets in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. They maintain that their attacks target ships linked to Israel, the United States or the United Kingdom.
Sare’e said Tel Aviv which referred to by its ancient Palestinian name of Yafa is no longer a safe place as it is within range of Yemeni weapons.
“The Yemeni Army hereby declares that occupied Yafa is no longer a safe zone, and will continue to be a primary target within the range of our weapons. We will focus on targeting sites and facilities deep inside the occupied lands,” he said.

He said Yemeni air defense units employed for the first time an advanced and radar-evading unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), named “Yafa,” to strike Tel Aviv.
Sare’e said the operation was successful, which had accomplished the desired objectives.
He said the Yemeni armed forces have “a bank of Israeli targets”, including sensitive military and security buildings, which they will continue to strike in response to the Israeli military’s atrocities and daily crimes in Gaza.  
“The Yemeni armed forces’ operations will continue in support of heroic resistance fighters in Gaza, who are defending our Arab and Muslim lands. Our operations will not cease until the ongoing aggression against Gaza stops and the tight blockade on Palestinians is lifted.” 
Friday’s drone strike on Tel Aviv could resurface fears about the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas expanding into a regionwide conflagration.
On Thursday, extremist security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited Al-Quds’ most sensitive holy site. 
The Israeli war on Gaza, which began on Oct. 7, has martyred more than 38,900 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.
“We…highly appreciate and commend the qualitative military operation carried out by the Yemeni armed forces and the brothers of Ansarullah, targeting the heart of the city of ‘Tel Aviv’, the center of the entity and the symbol of its pride,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We highly value the positions of Sayyed Abdulmalik al-Houthi and the dear Yemeni people who support our Palestinian people with all available resources and capabilities.”
The movement also hailed anti-Israel operations conducted by Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, stressing that they are “a legitimate right of our nation’s resistance and its people, to confront the fascist Zionist expansion and its arrogance in the region.”
“We commend the positions of the brothers in Ansarullah in Yemen, Hezbollah and the Islamic Group in Lebanon, and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and we appreciate their sacrifices.”
The Islamic Jihad described the operation as “heroic” and “bold”, saying it was “a natural response” to the ongoing war crimes committed against Palestinians in Gaza.
“Our brothers in Yemen, as well as our brothers on the support fronts in Lebanon and Iraq, have proven that the cause of Palestine and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque is the central cause of the Arab and Islamic nations, and that resistance is the only way to confront Zionist and Western arrogance against our nation.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinedescribed it as “a qualitative shift in the responses of the support resistance fronts and demonstrates their ability” to target areas deep inside the occupied territories. 
“The support fronts in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq have fulfilled their promises and expanded their responses to the escalating Zionist massacres in the Gaza Strip. They are ready to continue these unique operations if the aggression persists.”
The operations, it said, “sent clear messages to the cowardly leaders of the occupation that the entire Zionist entity is within the reach of resistance and support front strikes, and that there is no safe place for Zionists anywhere,” and proved the failure of the U.S. and its allies to protect the occupying regime.
Palestine’s Mujahideen Brigades hailed the operation as a “qualitative shift” in the resistance against the Zionist regime.
The brigades praised the Yemeni army and other resistance groups over their “most honorable military intervention” to support the oppressed and confront the injustices imposed by the Israeli occupiers.