Drone Blasts Hit Two Egyptian Red Sea Towns, Israel Points to Houthi
Drones caused explosions that rocked two Egyptian towns on the Red Sea on Friday, the Egyptian army said, while Israel said Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement sent them to strike Israel. The explosions injured six people and illustrated the risk of regional spillover from the Israel-Gaza conflict. There was no claim of responsibility.
Israel’s foreign ministry said the Iran-backed Houthi launched drones and missiles “with the intention of harming Israel.” Egypt’s military spokesman Colonel Gharib Abdel-Hafez said two drones were fired from the southern Red Sea aiming north. Yemen is at the south end of the sea and Israel at the north.
One drone crashed into a building adjacent to a hospital in the Egyptian town of Taba on the border with Israel, injuring six, in the early hours of Friday, Egypt’s military said. The second drone was downed outside Egyptian airspace on Friday morning, and the debris fell in a desert area of Nuweiba town, about 70 km (43 miles) from the Israeli border, Egypt said.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that combat helicopters had been scrambled when “an aerial threat was spotted in the Red Sea region”. “To our understanding, the strike that took place in Egypt originated in this threat,” he added in a televised briefing before Israel’s foreign ministry attributed the drones to the Houthi.
Witnesses in Taba and Nuweiba, popular tourist destinations on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, said they heard explosions and saw smoke as well as Egyptian warplanes flying overhead.
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