Drone hits Israel school, army says, as Yemen’s Houthis claim missile launch

A drone on Thursday hit a school in the southern Israeli resort of Eilat and Israeli air defenses later intercepted a missile over the Red Sea, the military said.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militias said they had launched “a barrage of ballistic missiles” at southern Israel, but did not mention drones in their statement.

No one was physically hurt in the explosion at the Eilat elementary school caused by the unidentified drone, but paramedics were treating seven people for shock, said an army spokeswoman at the scene.

Emergency services confirmed the details separately.

Local residents clustered around the school complex, which was cordoned off by dozens of soldiers and police officers, an AFP reporter saw.

Later Thursday, the Israeli army said it intercepted a missile over the Red Sea without confirming its origin.

The Houthis have claimed repeated missile and drone attacks at Israel as they step up a campaign of disruptive strikes also targeting US forces in the region during Israel’s war with Hamas since October 7.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a statement: “Our armed forces… launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at various sensitive targets of the Israeli entity… including military targets in the area of Umm Al-Rashrash,” the Arabic name of the town that stood where Eilat now is.

He said the operation was “successful” and claimed “direct hits.”

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters the army was monitoring threats in the region, including against Eilat on the Red Sea coast.

“It can come from several places,” Hagari told reporters.

The ongoing war erupted when Hamas militants crossed from Gaza into southern Israel on October 7, killing some 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.

More than 10,800 people have been killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes unleashed in the Gaza Strip, the majority civilians, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory says.

In a separate incident linked to the Israel-Hamas war, the Houthis said Wednesday that they shot down an American drone.

“Our air defenses were able to down an American MQ-9 while it was carrying out hostile surveillance and espionage activities in Yemeni territorial waters as part of American military support” for Israel, the militia said in a statement.

Senior officials from the United States — which rushed military support to Israel and bolstered American forces in the region after the October 7 attack — have confirmed that one of the country’s drones was downed.