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Middle East conflict

Houthis say they attacked target NEAR Tel Aviv with hypersonic missile

The Israel Defense Forces said earlier in the day that sirens sounded in a number of areas in the central part of the country following missile launches from Yemen

DOHA, December 16. /TASS/. The Houthis from Yemen's rebel Ansar Allah movement have delivered a strike on a military facility near Tel Aviv’ with a hypersonic ballistic missile, the movement’s military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said.

"The Yemeni armed forces’ missile troops conducted a military operation and attacked a military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied Jaffa neighborhood with the use of a Palestine-2 hypersonic ballistic missile," he told the Houthi-owned Al Masirah television channel, adding that the missile successfully hit its target.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said earlier in the day that sirens sounded in a number of areas in the central part of the country following missile launches from Yemen. Later, the IDF said that they had intercepted a missile before it entered the country’s airspace.

Following the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis warned that they would launch strikes on Israeli territory while barring ships associated with the Jewish state from passing through the waters of the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait until Tel Aviv ceased its military operation against Palestinian radical group Hamas in the embattled enclave. Since mid-November, dozens of civilian ships have been attacked by the Houthi in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

In response to Ansar Allah's actions, the US authorities announced the creation of an international coalition and preparations for an operation codenamed Prosperity Guardian, expected to ensure freedom of navigation and protection of ships in the Red Sea. Since then, the United States and the United Kingdom have been regularly delivering strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.

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