Drone hits Tel Aviv with the roar of a fighter jet: witnesses

It was 3.00 am and Jonathan Karten had just arrived with friends at his apartment from a party when they heard what sounded like a fighter jet swooping in over the sea towards Tel Aviv.

The jet turned out to be a drone that crashed into an apartment block nearby Friday, killing one man and injuring a number of others.

Yemen’s Huthi rebels have claimed the attack, that stunned Israel as it battles the Gaza war.

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The blast from the drone strike smashed windows all along Shalom Aleichem Street where the drone fell.

Karten, a 27-year-old US venture capitalist in Israel’s commercial capital, was among scores of residents left to clear up smashed windows and cars in the street that were burned or had their windows pock-marked by debris.

Dozens of rooms in the block opposite Karten had windows blown out. His new apartment was relatively unscathed.

Karten said he and his friends were looking out of the windows just before the strike when one said: “‘Hey, what’s that over there? It looks cool’.

“I turn around, I hear this large, deafening buzz, like an F-35 or an F-15, but it was only roughly 40 metres (130 feet) above sea level. It didn’t make sense.”

Then the roar became an explosion.

Karten felt the heat and got everyone to the floor and then to building’s protective bunker, which has been regularly used since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

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– Rocket threat –

Hundreds of rockets were fired at Tel Aviv during the attacks and in following days.

Nearly all were intercepted, so a strike that hits the city has been a rare event, no matter where it comes from.

“Obviously, all of this stuff can be replaced,” Karsten said as he surveyed the damage outside. “The most important thing is we left with our lives.”

“It’s important to note that this is a residential area. It’s not a military target,” he added.

Police said they received hundreds of emergency calls from neighbours after the blast.

The man who died was in his 50s and suffered shrapnel wounds, a spokesman said.

Kenneth Davis, who was staying in a hotel opposite the building hit, said: “It woke me up because the vibration of the sound was like a (Boeing) 747 coming in.

“And then the explosion… everything blew out in the room, the windows and things from the ceiling, and it was on me, nothing heavy, but lots of pieces of stuff,” he told AFPTV.

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The Israeli military has blamed “human error” for the failure to intercept the drone that the Huthis said was a new “Yafa” model that could by-pass Israel’s air defences.

The Huthis have fired dozens of drones at Israel since the October 7 attacks. Nearly all have been intercepted by Israeli fighter jets and air defence missiles.

Israeli military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the drone was probably an Iranian-designed Samad-3, upgraded to have its range extended to reach Tel Aviv.

Acknowledging that Israel’s air defences were not “hermetic”, Hagari said Israeli air patrols have been stepped up and the attack was being “deeply” investigated.

Military leaders would decide “what the necessary operational responses are against those who threaten the state of Israel,” he warned.

© Agence France-Presse