DOHA, December 25. /TASS/. Houthis of Yemen's rebel Ansar Allah movement have struck a military target located near Tel Aviv using a hypersonic missile, a spokesman for the rebel-formed armed forces Yahya Sare'e said.

"The Yemeni Armed Forces' missile troops <...> struck a Palestine-2 hypersonic ballistic missile at Israel's military facility in the occupied Jaffa (Tel Aviv - TASS) neighborhood," Sare'e told the Houthi-run Al Masirah TV channel. According to the spokesman, the rebel operation against Israel had "successfully achieved its goals."

On Wednesday night, the Israeli army press office reported that air-raid sirens sounded in several areas of central Israel following the launch of a missile from Yemen. The military successfully intercepted the missile before it entered Israeli 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 Houthis 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.