Houthis claim missile attack on Tel Aviv after Israel strikes Yemen airport – Middle East crisis live

Israeli forces have raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of only three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate the compound, according to officials.

The Palestinian health ministry said contact with staff inside the facility, which has been under heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks, had been lost.

Munir Al-Bursh, director of the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, said in a statement:

The occupation forces are inside the hospital now and they are burning it.

Medics and the civil emergency service also reported separate incidents across Gaza in which Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people. One of those strikes on a house in Gaza City killed 15 people.

The Israeli military said it had made efforts to mitigate harm to civilians and had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel prior to the operation” but gave no details.

It said in a statement:

Kamal Adwan Hospital serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in northern Gaza, from which terrorists have been operating throughout the war.

At least 45,436 Palestinian people have been killed and 108,038 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Of those, 37 Palestinians were killed and 98 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.

Gaza’s health ministry has said in the past that thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory.

Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for the Guardian

Five Palestinian journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their vehicle in central Gaza, their employer has said.

Faisal Abu al-Qumsan, Ayman al-Jadi, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed al-Lada’a were sleeping in their broadcasting truck, marked as press, when it was targeted in a direct strike by the Israeli military, witnesses told Palestinian media. Another 32 people were killed in other Israeli pre-dawn strikes across the territory, the local health ministry said.

The five men, who worked at Al-Quds Today, a television channel affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group that fights alongside Hamas, were buried on Thursday morning.

Israel’s military said in a statement it had conducted “a precise strike on a vehicle with an Islamic Jihad terrorist cell inside in the area of Nuseirat … Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

The Israeli military demanded that medical staff and patients leave the premises of Kamal Adwan hospital to make room for their forces to storm the facility, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported this morning.

Gaza’s health ministry has said the three main hospitals in northern Gaza – of which Kamal Adwan is one – are barely functioning and have been under repeated attack since Israel sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and nearby Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in October.

Yesterday five hospital staff members were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting Kamal Adwan hospital, Wafa reported. About 90 patients are estimated to still be inside the hospital.

Gaza’s health ministry was quoted earlier in the week saying that Israeli bombing was targeting all the departments of the hospital “around the clock without stopping”.

Here is an extract from an Al Jazeera report published this morning. We have not been able to independently verify the information in it yet:

This morning, Israel pushed deeper into the area surrounding Kamal Adwan hospital. Israeli armoured tanks advanced deeper under heavy cover from quadcopter machineguns.

Explosive devices had already been planted in the vicinity of the hospital. Four were set off near the northern gate, at the back entrance, causing damage to the compound and sparking fires in some of the buildings around it.

Israeli officers called on loudspeakers to the director of the hospital and for the injured and the patients to come out of the hospital within 15 minutes. This happened at about 7:15am [05:15 GMT]. We haven’t had any communication from the hospital since.

Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the overnight firing of a missile at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport and say they launched drones at Israel’s commercial capital, as well as a ship in the Arabian Sea, according to reports. Here is a report from The Times of Israel, which we have not yet been able to independently verify:

The Houthis claim that “the missile succeeded in reaching its target despite the enemy’s censorship, and the operation resulted in casualties and the cessation of navigation at the airport.”

The IDF said the missile was successfully downed by air defenses, and there were no reports of impacts at the airport. Flight arrivals were reportedly halted for 30 minutes.

Additionally, the Houthis claim to have carried out a drone attack on a “vital target” in the Tel Aviv area. There were no reports of drones reaching Israel from Yemen in the past day.

The Houthis also say that it targeted a container ship in the Arabian Sea with several drones.

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea for more than a year to try to enforce a naval blockade on Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza.

The strikes on shipping by the Houthis, who have also launched missiles at Israel, have prompted retaliatory strikes by the US and Britain. Here is an extract from our explainer on the group:

The Houthis are a Yemeni militia group named after their founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, and representing the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam.

They emerged in the 1980s in opposition to Saudi Arabia’s religious influence in Yemen.

The group, which has an estimated 20,000 fighters and whose official name is Ansar Allah, runs most of the west of the country and is in charge of its Red Sea coastline…

The Houthis had been gaining support around the turn of the century from Shia Yemenis fed up with the corruption and cruelty of the longtime authoritarian president and Saudi ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh, particularly during the aftermath of 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq. Popular protests and several assassination attempts forced Saleh to resign in 2012.

In 2014 the Houthis allied with their former enemy Saleh to seize the capital, Sana’a, and overthrew the new western-backed president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, a year later. After Hadi was forced to flee, the exiled Yemeni government asked its allies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE to launch a military campaign, also backed by the west, to drive out the Houthis.

A catastrophic civil war ensued that the UN estimated led to 377,000 deaths and displaced 4 million people by the end of 2021.

The Houthis in effect won the war. An April 2022 ceasefire prompted a significant decline in violence, and fighting has largely remained in abeyance despite the official expiry of the truce in October.

Welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis after Israel struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Thursday, including the international airport in the capital, Sana’a. Houthi media said at least six people were killed.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says he was at Yemen’s international airport when it was hit. A crew member on the plane was injured, he said, and at least two people were reported killed at the airport. Tedros said he had been in Yemen to negotiate the release of UN staff detained by the Houthis and assess the humanitarian situation.

The Israeli military said that it also hit military infrastructure at the ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib on Yemen’s west coast. It also attacked the country’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations.

Later on Thursday, the Houthis – which have declared themselves to be part of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance” against Israel – reportedly said they were ready to respond quickly to the attack and meet “escalation with escalation”.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel’s airstrikes would “continue until the job is done”. “We are determined to cut this branch of terrorism from the Iranian axis of evil,” he said in a video statement.

In other developments:

• The United Nations chief, António Guterres, has denounced the “escalation” in hostilities between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Israel, calling IDF strikes on targets including at the airport in Sana’a “especially alarming”.

• The UN security council is due to meet on Monday over the Houthi attacks on Israel, Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon has said.

• Israel’s military intercepted a missile fired from Yemen in the latest attack by Houthi rebels – hours after Israeli military bombed sites in Yemen.

• Israel’s military has forced dozens of sick and injured patient to leave Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza,Al Jazeera is reporting.