Yemen's Houthi group on Sunday claimed responsibility for a missile attack on central Israel, according to a statement aired by the Houthi-run al-Masirah TV.
The Israel Defense Forces reported on the same day that, in the early hours of Sunday, Houthi forces from Yemen launched a ground-to-ground missile at central Israel. Israeli rescue agencies later confirmed that nine people were injured while seeking refuge.
Houthi spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in a televised statement that the Houthis used a new type of hypersonic missile to strike deep within Israeli territory.
"The operation was carried out with a new hypersonic ballistic missile that, with Allah's help, successfully reached its target, and the enemy's defense system failed to intercept or confront it. The missile traveled a distance of approximately 2,040 km in 11 and a half minutes," Sarea said in the video.
Sarea reaffirmed the Houthis' support for the Palestinian people, warning that Israel would face increasingly frequent and varied attacks. He added that the missile strike was retaliation for Israel's large-scale airstrike on Yemen's port city of Hodeidah on July 20.
On the same day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would carry out severe reprisals in response to the attack.
Yemen's Houthis claim responsibility for missile attack on central Israel
Yemen's Houthis claim responsibility for missile attack on central Israel
Yemen's Houthis claim responsibility for missile attack on central Israel
With the beginning of the cotton harvest season, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is anticipating higher yields from advancements in agricultural technology and mechanization.
Xinjiang is the largest production area of high-quality commodity cotton in China. The 2.47-million-hectare cotton growing area in the region has produced more than 5 million tons of cotton for six consecutive years.
The northern and southern parts of the vast autonomous region have different climates, different cotton varieties and also different growing periods. Currently, cotton picking started two weeks ago in northern Xinjiang, while the harvesting has just begun in the southern areas.
In Tumxuk City, located in southern Xinjiang, cotton farmers are using all-in-one harvesters to help them pick cotton, separate the flowers from the stalks and pack them into bundles.
"In the past, we picked the cotton manually. It took us more than a month to pick 100 mu (6.67 hectares) of cotton, and the cost reached 1,000 yuan per mu (about 2,106 U.S. dollars per hectare). Now, we use domestically produced cotton pickers to gather them, which have high efficiency and low cost. It now takes less than a day to harvest my 100 mu of cotton, with a cost less than 200 yuan per mu," said Turaxun Samat, a local farmer.
This year, Xinjiang has vigorously promoted the new cotton planting technology of drip irrigation under the mulching film at the appropriate emergence temperature, replacing the old method of irrigating before sowing. The technology can greatly improve the emergence rate while also saving water resources.
In addition, the precision sowing supported by BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and remote sensing monitoring by the agricultural big data platform have also been widely adopted across Xinjiang, contributing to the growth of cotton output.
"This year, a total of 1,057,800 mu (about 70,520 hectares) of cotton have been planted in Tumxuk City, and the unginned cotton yield is estimated at 451.4 kilograms per mu, an average increase of 11.7 kilograms per mu over the previous year," said Chen Yongsen, a member of the leadership of the city's Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
The cotton harvesting in Xinjiang is expected to end in early November.
Xinjiang enters cotton harvest season with higher yield expected
