At least 20 people reported injured after drone strike on Israeli city of Eilat | Israel

At least 20 people have been injured, two seriously, after a drone launched from Yemen hit Israel’s Red Sea resort city of Eilat on the border with Jordan and Egypt.

Police said the drone fell in Eilat’s city centre, causing damage in the area frequented by tourists.

Footage shared on social media showed a drone flying above the resort town before crashing, with smoke and flames rising from the impact area. Local reports suggested the drone had hit the ground next to a hotel, damaging several rooms.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which occurred on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 Eli Lankri, the mayor of Eilat, called on the government to “strike the Houthis hard” in retaliation, adding that repeated Houthi attacks have disrupted operations at the Eilat port.

The Israeli military said interception attempts had been made but gave no further details.

The local newspaper Israel Hayom, citing an initial investigation, said air defence systems had failed to intercept the drone.

The drone attack on Wednesday comes days after the Houthis fired a drone that crashed in Eilat’s hotel zone, resulting in material damage but no casualties.

The Houthis, who are backed by Iran, have been launching missiles and drones thousands of kilometres north towards Israel, in what the group says are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians. Most of the dozens of missiles and drones have been intercepted or fallen short of Israeli territory. Few have caused significant damage, though one temporarily shut down Israel’s main international airport earlier this year.

Israel has retaliated by bombing Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, including the vital Hodeidah port. The Houthis, who control the most populous parts of Yemen, have also been attacking vessels in the Red Sea since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

In Gaza, the Israeli military on Wednesday pressed its assault on Gaza City, from where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel in which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostage. The ensuing Israeli military campaign has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and injured more than 160,000, and has spread famine, reduced swathes of the territory to ruins and displaced most of the population, in many cases multiple times.

Benjamin Netanyahu had told the family of Alon Ohel, a hostage still held in Gaza, that a combined military and diplomatic effort was being pursued to defeat Hamas and bring back all hostages, the Israeli prime minister’s office said on Wednesday.