How Israeli ballistic missiles bypassed Gulf airspace and hit Qatar

Israeli fighter jets over the Red Sea launched ballistic missiles to target Hamas leaders in Qatar last week, a US defence official said, in what was a novel method likely designed to overcome the energy-rich country’s air defences and avoid entering any Mideast nation’s airspace.

The September 9 attack, which killed six people in Qatar’s capital, Doha, upended months of diplomacy mediated by the Arabian Peninsula nation to reach a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war that has devastated the enclave for nearly two years. About a week after the missile launch, Israel began a ground offensive targeting Gaza City. That has reignited anger in the region over the war, while the Doha attack has raised fears in other countries that they, too, could be struck.

The Israeli military took advantage of the element of surprise by firing in a direction probably not anticipated by Qatar or the United States, whose Mideast forward headquarters operates out of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Even if those countries did know, experts say the Patriot missile batteries in Qatar likely would have been unable to intercept the missiles travelling through space at multiple times the speed of sound.

“We’re probably talking about a few minutes from fire to impact, so not long at all,” said Sidharth Kaushal, a missile expert and senior research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. “Even if [Patriot batteries] did pick it up, interception would have been dumb luck at that point.”

The US defence official said that the missiles were fired by Israeli fighter jets over the Red Sea, with Hamas leaders gathered in Qatar to consider a Gaza ceasefire proposal. The official had direct knowledge of how Israel conducted the strike and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.