It was 3 a.m. 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 Israel-Hamas War.
The blast from the drone strike smashed windows all along Shalom Aleichem Street where the drone fell.
Karten, a 27-year-old U.S. venture capitalist in the Israeli commercial hub, 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.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant vowed to avenge the drone attack.
“The security system will settle the score with all who try to harm the state of Israel, or sends terrorism against it, in a decisive and surprising manner,” he said in comments posted on social media platform X.
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,” Karten 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.
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.
An Iran-backed armed group
The Huthis are one of a number of Iran-backed armed groups around the Middle East that have claimed drone and missile attacks on Israel in retaliation for the Gaza war.
They have previously claimed attacks on Israeli cities including Ashdod, Haifa and Eilat, but Friday’s strike appears to be the first to breach Israel’s sophisticated air defences.
Condemnation from the EU
The European Union on Friday said it “firmly condemns” the deadly drone attack in Tel Aviv.
“The European Union firmly condemns the indiscriminate Houthi-claimed drone attack on Tel Aviv early on Friday morning,” spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said in a statement.
“International Humanitarian Law strictly prohibits indiscriminate shelling of civilian population centres and applies to all actors at all times without exception.”
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