ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Israel’s military on Friday announced that it had shot down a suspected Houthi missile fired from Yemen as it was en route to the country.

"Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted," an Israeli military statement read, also noting that the missile was shot down before it reached Israeli airspace.

Houthi officials claimed that the strike involved "hypersonic missiles" and was targeting an air base "east of the occupied area of Haifa."

Battered by US and, as of recently, British airstrikes, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have continued to fight against what they describe as “Israeli-American aggression,” launching a hypersonic missile at an airbase in Israel’s Negev desert on Sunday.

The Houthis began a campaign targeting international shipping in the wake of the Palestinian group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, with over 100 merchant vessels having been targeted by Houthi militants in the period since.

A Pentagon statement on Wednesday reported that the US military has struck over 1,000 Houthi targets in Yemen since President Donald Trump decided to ramp up strikes against the group.

However, the near-daily strikes have faced criticism from the international community, with a UN spokesperson saying the organization is "deeply alarmed" in the wake of a recent strike on a migrant detention center that killed 68 people, many of whom were African migrants seeking to traverse the war-torn country for a better quality of life in the Gulf.

In addition to previous missile launches, the Yemeni militant group has previously claimed successful drone attacks against Tel Aviv.

Israel operates a sophisticated air defense system comprising myriad shelters and sirens designed to protect its population, as well as ground-to-air missiles designed to intercept incoming projectiles.

Updated at 10:15 with Houthi claim of responsibility