The British maritime transport security company Ambrey announced yesterday Sunday that Israel’s armed forces intercepted a remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicle a short distance from Eilat that it said was launched from Yemen.

It also reported that it recorded unprecedented levels of interference with automatic identification systems (Automatic Identification Systems, AIS) of ships off Eilat and neighboring Aqaba (Jordan) yesterday, which attributed to the greatly increased use of “electronic warfare systems”.

From his side, the Israeli military announced yesterday via X that a Saar-6 class corvette “successfully intercepted a UAV approaching Israeli territory from the southeast using the C-Dome defense system.”

C-Dome is the naval version of the land-based “Iron Dome” system, in use for over a decade to intercept Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets fired from the Gaza Strip in particular.

Its first operational use by an Israeli corvette was just last Tuesday, to shoot down a “suspicious” object that “violated” Israeli airspace, also near Eilat. It was not officially specified what the “suspicious” object was, however Israeli media reported that it was a drone.

Eilat is a frequent target of attacks by the Houthis, who say they are acting against Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The Houthis launched ballistic missiles against the strategically important port in February, which were intercepted. They were also involved in Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack against Israel on Saturday night into Sunday.