Israel says missile launched by Yemen’s Houthis was intercepted

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(Reuters) -Yemen’s Houthi militant group said late on Friday it had attacked Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv with a ballistic missile, while the Israeli military said the projectile was intercepted after air raid sirens were triggered in several parts of the country.

Most of the dozens of missiles and drones the Houthis have launched at Israel have been intercepted or fallen short. Israel has carried out a series of retaliatory strikes.

The Iran-aligned Houthis have been firing at Israel and attacking shipping lanes. Traffic through the Red Sea, a critical waterway for the world’s oil and commodities, has dropped since the militia began targeting ships in November 2023 in what the group said was solidarity with Palestinians against Israel in the Gaza war.

Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a U.S.-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the 21-month war that has laid waste to the Palestinian enclave.

Earlier on Friday, Hamas said that while the group favours reaching an interim truce, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.

Israel and Hamas have repeatedly accused each other of obstructing progress towards a deal.

(Reporting by Enas Alashray and Ahmed Tolba; Editing by Franklin Paul, Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis)