An Israel Defense Forces spokesman said the explosion was caused by an Iranian-made drone launched from Yemen, according to early unconfirmed analysis. The IDF said it increased air patrols “to protect Israeli airspace.”
No siren was activated, and the IDF said an initial inquiry pointed to “human error that caused the interception and defense systems not to be operated.” The error may have been related to “identification,” an IDF official said in an earlier briefing, saying that the matter was still being investigated.
The spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, dismissed Houthi claims that the drone was a type of stealth aircraft and maintained it had been picked up by Israeli monitoring systems.
A second drone targeting Israeli airspace was successful intercepted early Friday, he said. Investigators were exploring whether the two attacks were related.
The drone that reached Tel Aviv was an Iranian-made Samad-3 that had been modified to fly greater distances, he said.
Officials said they did not believe the attack originated from Lebanon, where Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters have been exchanging rocket fire with Israeli forces and sending drones over the border for months.
The Houthis, a Yemen-based group that has been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea since last year, said Friday in a statement that it had carried out a “military operation” targeting Tel Aviv that “successfully achieved its objectives,” using what it said was a new drone capable of evading countermeasures. The attack, the statement said, was in response to Israeli “massacres” in Gaza.
Witnesses said they heard and saw an aircraft appear from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea around 3 a.m. and slam into a building with a loud explosion. There were no warning alarms in a city where residents are used to air raid sirens and alerts on their phones sending them to shelters.
Limor Sagiv, 58, was asleep with her partner in a fifth-floor apartment less than two blocks from the U.S. Embassy facility when the blast shattered their kitchen window and a balcony door.
“There was an orange flash and a smell like a rubber fire,” said Sagiv, standing in a living room filled with glass shards. They had just returned to the apartment after being told by police to evacuate the area for a few hours in case of secondary attacks.
Noa Yehoshua was up late with friends in a nearby apartment when one of them spotted a small aircraft with a round fuselage and wide wings.
“My friend was sitting by the window and said, ‘Oh wow, guys, what it that?’” Yehoshua said. “And then it just exploded.”
Yehoshua, 23, an army reservist scheduled to deploy to Gaza next week, said the drone strike was part of the wider war with Iran-backed forces throughout the region that has raged since the Hamas raid on Israeli towns on Oct. 7.
“It’s so surreal that we’re attacked over and over and over again in a war that we didn’t even start,” she said.
During the war in Gaza, the Houthis and other Iran-backed groups in the region have carried out regular attacks they say are aimed at supporting Palestinian militant groups and ending Israel’s military offensive. The Yemeni group has previously claimed drone attacks on the southern Israeli city of Eilat — roughly 1,000 miles from northern Yemen — but the strike on Tel Aviv, if confirmed, appears to represent an increase in the Houthis’ capabilities and reach.
The Yemeni group said it would continue to target Tel Aviv with future attacks.
“The security system is working to immediately strengthen all defense systems, and will come to account with anyone who harms the State of Israel or sends terror against it,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement Friday.
The fatality was a 50-year-old man who was found with severe shrapnel injuries in an apartment adjacent to the blast, said Roee Klein, a paramedic with Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency service. The nearby Ichilov Medical Center said Friday it had treated and released five people injured in the strike.
Friday’s rare attack on Tel Aviv took place hours after the Israeli air force said it killed two commanders of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group in Lebanon with which Israel has been exchanging fire. Hezbollah acknowledged the deaths of two of its members but did not identify them as senior operatives.
Israel’s aerial defense system, outfitted primarily for rockets, has for months struggled to identify and eliminate Hezbollah drones — which fly lower and often in nonlinear paths — in attacks on Israel’s north.
In the hours after the explosion, Israeli bomb disposal experts and rescue teams were operating at the site. Police urged residents to avoid approaching the scene and touching “rocket remnants that may contain explosives.”
Security personnel combed the area for debris from the drone, sending some parts for analysis. One officer discarded what appeared to be lithium batteries from the aircraft in a nearby dumpster.
Fabian Hinz, a research fellow who studies drones and missiles at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said in a post on X that pictures of the debris from the drone that circulated Friday appeared to show an Iranian-made engine and features with “similarities” to the Houthi Samad-3 drone, the group’s “standard long-range strike drone” that has been used in several attacks against Israel, he wrote.
While Houthi claims that the drone used Friday could evade radar needed to be treated skeptically, “it’s possible we are seeing a slightly more capable Sammad version here,” he wrote, based on what he said could be the attachment of a more powerful engine.
“For the Houthis, increasing the UAV range would be quite attractive as it would allow them to strike targets further away, fly routes evading enemy defenses and attack from unexpected angles,” Hinz wrote.
Tel Aviv’s mayor, Ron Huldai, posted on X that the city was on “high alert” after the drone attack and that residents were required to follow emergency instructions. “The war is still here, and it is hard and painful,” he said.
It was not immediately clear whether the drone was targeting the U.S. Embassy branch office. U.S. Embassy officials in Israel did not respond to request for comment early Friday.
Fahim reported from Istanbul, Ables from Seoul, Rubin and Hendrix from Jerusalem. Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv and Suzan Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report.
