Rocket fired from Yemen hit the area of Tel Aviv overnight, injuring 16 people from broken glass, Israel’s military said on Saturday, days after Israeli airstrikes hit Houthi rebels who had launched missiles in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Another 14 people suffered minor injuries as they rushed to shelters when air raid sirens sounded before dawn on Saturday, the military said.

The Houthis published a statement on Telegram stating that they directed a hypersonic ballistic missile at a military target, which they did not identify.

“A flash of light, a bang and we fell to the ground. Big mess, broken glasses everywhere,” said Bar Katz, a resident of the damaged building.

The attack came after Israeli airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-held capital Sana’a and the port city of Hodeida killed at least nine people on Thursday. The Israeli strikes were in response to a Houthi long-range missile that hit an Israeli school building. The Houthis also claimed to have carried out a drone attack on an unspecified military target in central Israel on Thursday.

Israel’s military says the Iran-backed Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles and drones during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. The Houthis have also attacked ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and say they will not stop until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Thursday’s Israeli strikes caused “significant damage” to Houthi-controlled Red Sea ports that will lead to an “immediate and significant reduction in port capacity,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The port of Hodeida has been crucial for food shipments to Yemen in its decade-long civil war.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said attacks by both sides threaten further escalation in the region.

Israeli attacks in Gaza claim more lives

Mourners in Gaza held funerals for 19 people – 12 of them children – killed in Israeli attacks on Friday and overnight.

One strike hit a residential building in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least seven Palestinians, including five children and a woman, and wounding 16 others, health officials said.

In Gaza City, an attack on a house killed 12 people, including seven children and two women, according to Al-Ahli Hospital, where the bodies were taken.

A man held a tiny body wrapped in a shroud as mourners gathered at a hospital in Gaza City. The women comforted each other as they cried.

In total, the Gaza Ministry of Health announced that 21 people had been killed in the last 24 hours.

More than 45,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, when a Hamas attack in Israel killed around 1,200 people and sparked a 14-month war. The Ministry of Health does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but said more than half of the dead were women and children.

Israel faces heavy international criticism for the unprecedented levels of civilian deaths in Gaza. He says he only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in residential areas.

Gaza’s health ministry has issued an urgent appeal for medical supplies and food to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in largely isolated northern Gaza, as the hospital’s director described conditions as dire as the Israeli military mounts its latest offensive.

The ministry reported continuous gunfire and Israeli shelling near the hospital, saying “the shells hit the third floor and are entering the hospital, creating a state of panic.”

Director of the hospital dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh said the facility was facing “major shortages” and claimed that requests for basic medical supplies and ways to maintain oxygen, water and electricity systems “remain largely unmet.”

He said that 72 wounded people are being treated in hospital.

“Food is very scarce and we cannot provide meals for the wounded,” Safiyeh added. “We are urgently calling on anyone who can provide supplies to help us.”

Aid groups say Israeli military operations and armed gangs have hampered their ability to distribute aid.

Israel’s military organization that handles humanitarian affairs for Gaza said on Saturday that it led an operation to deliver thousands of packages of food, flour and water to the Beit Hanoun area in the north. They were said to have been transported by UN World Food Program trucks to distribution centers in the area on Friday.

Iran said on Saturday that unknown gunmen killed a local employee of the Iranian embassy in Syria, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The report quoted foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei as saying that “terrorists” opened fire on Davood Bitaraf’s car last Sunday. It is not said what he did with the embassy.

Baghaei said Iran holds the interim Syrian government responsible for finding and prosecuting those behind the killing. Iran was a key ally of recently deposed Syrian leader Bashar Assad.