Explosions were heard off the coast of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, state-linked media said, with witnesses reporting that they saw something fall into the Gulf of Aqaba.
Al Qahera News television, which has links to state intelligence, said the blasts occurred about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Egyptian seaside town of Dahab.
“We heard a loud explosion coming from the direction of the sea, and then we saw a strange object falling into the water,” an eyewitness told AFP.
No casualties or damage were reported.
Dahab lies around 125 kilometers (75 miles) south of Eilat, on the Red Sea. Flying objects have been repeatedly downed near south Sinai, with the Egyptian military at times pointing to “drones coming from the south of the Red Sea.”
Footage posted by the Saudi-owned news network Al-Arabiya appeared to show an aerial interception over the Red Sea.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched a flurry of drone and missile attack at Israel since the start of its war with Hamas.
Most have failed to reach their targets and many have been intercepted.
The war began on October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 240 hostages of all ages under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities. The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities amid horrific acts of brutality were civilians — including babies, children and the elderly.
The Houthis say the strikes are in solidarity with the people of Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry says more than 20,900 people have been killed in the conflict. However, these figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both Hamas terrorists and civilians, and people killed as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires.
In late October, six people were wounded in Egypt when two drones came down in Taba, which borders Israel.
The Egyptian air force earlier this month shot down a drone that had been detected over Egypt’s territorial waters, also near Dahab, though a security source said the origin of the drone was “unknown.”