TEL AVIV: Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday vowed a response to Yemen’s Houthis and their Iranian backers after the rebels struck the area of the Zionist entity’s main airport, wounding six people and prompting several major airlines to suspend flights. The strike came hours before the Zionist army confirmed the call-up of “tens of thousands” of reservists to expand the 19-month war in Gaza against Hamas.

The military confirmed that the attack, which gouged a large crater in the perimeter of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, was launched from Yemen and had struck despite “several attempts... to intercept the missile”. In a video published on Telegram, Netanyahu said the Zionist entity had “acted against” the rebels in the past and “will act in the future”. “It will not happen in one bang, but there will be many bangs,” he added, without going into further detail.

Later on X, Netanyahu said the Zionist entity would also respond to Iran at “a time and place of our choosing”. A police video showed officers standing on the edge of a deep hole in the ground with the control tower visible behind them. The police reported a “missile impact” at the Zionist entity’s main international gateway. An AFP photographer said the missile hit near the parking lots of Terminal 3, the airport’s largest. The crater was just hundreds of meters from the tarmac.

“You can see the area just behind us: A crater was formed here, several dozen meters wide and several dozen meters deep,” Zionist police chief Yair Hezroni said in the video. “This is the first time” that a missile has directly struck inside the airport perimeter, a Zionist military spokesperson told AFP. Earlier, the Houthis, who act in support of Palestinians in war-ravaged Gaza, claimed responsibility for the attack. The rebels said their forces “carried out a military operation targeting Ben Gurion airport” with a “hypersonic ballistic missile”.

Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened a forceful response, saying: “Anyone who hits us, we will hit them seven times stronger.” Hamas and Islamic Jihad later hailed the attack on the airport. The Zionist Magen David Adom emergency service said it had treated at least six people with light to moderate injuries.

An AFP journalist inside the airport at the time of the attack said he heard a “loud bang” at around 9:35 am (0635 GMT), adding that the “reverberation was very strong”. “Security staff immediately asked hundreds of passengers to take shelter, some in bunkers,” the AFP journalist said. “Many passengers are now waiting for their flights to take off, and others are trying to find alternative flights.” An incoming Air India flight was diverted to Abu Dhabi, an airport official told AFP.

It was one of the airlines to suspend Tel Aviv flights until Tuesday along with Italy’s ITA Airways and Germany’s Lufthansa Group, which includes Austrian, Eurowings and SWISS. Air France announced the cancellation of Sunday flights. A passenger said the attack, which came shortly after air raid sirens sounded across parts of the Zionist entity, caused “panic”.

An airline official said: “Today was a close call”. “I have worked at the airport for several years but even I was afraid today,” they told AFP. Flights resumed after being halted briefly, with the aviation authority saying Ben Gurion was now “open and operational”. The Zionist security cabinet was to meet on Sunday, a government official said, before army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir confirmed media reports of a planned expansion of the Gaza war.

“This week we are issuing tens of thousands of orders to our reservists to intensify and expand our operation in Gaza,” Zamir said in a statement, adding the army would destroy all Hamas infrastructure, “both on the surface and underground”. The Houthis, who control swathes of Yemen, have launched missiles and drones targeting the Zionist entity and Red Sea shipping throughout the Gaza war.

Meanwhile, Zionist military strikes killed at least 40 people across Gaza in the past 24 hours, the territory's health ministry said. Gaza's civil defense agency on Sunday said strikes on the Palestinian territory killed at least three children. Six people were killed in overnight air strikes in Khan Yunis governorate, in the south of the Gaza Strip, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said. They included two boys aged five and two, in an apartment in Al-Mawasi.

The civil defense later said 10 more people were killed in a strike on a tent also in Al-Mawasi, among them a child and seven women. The health ministry on Sunday said at least 2,436 people have been killed since the Zionist entity resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the war's overall death toll to 52,535. The Zionist entity has halted aid deliveries to Gaza. UN agencies have urged the Zionist entity to lift restrictions, saying Gazans have been experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe and warning of famine.

Hamas has executed a number of alleged looters after several incidents in which heavily armed gangs attacked food stores and community kitchens in the Gaza Strip this week, sources close to the Palestinian militant group said. Hamas officials have accused some of the looters of working in collaboration with the Zionist entity, which has sealed off aid from entering Gaza for the past two months.

In one incident, the Hamas-run interior ministry said a police officer was killed and others were wounded when a Zionist drone fired a missile at a police unit chasing criminals in Gaza City. “We will strike with an iron fist all these renegades, and we will take the necessary measures to deter them, no matter the cost, and we will not allow them to continue terrorizing citizens, threatening their lives, and stealing their property,” the ministry said in a statement on Saturday, referring to the alleged looters.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office, said some of the looters acted under a clan umbrella and others acted as organized groups, some of which he said received direct support from the Zionist entity. He said a number of “revolutionary execution rulings” had been carried out against “several top criminals” proven to have been involved in looting. Some Gaza residents and Palestinian media said Hamas’ armed wing imposed curfews starting at 9 pm to restrict the movement of civilians and to chase criminals. – Agencies