Gaza rocket alert sounds in false alarm

Mid-day siren jars residents of Israeli communities bordering the Strip, but army finds no evidence of impact

By Judah Ari Gross 28 April 2016, 1:58 pm

Edit

Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.

Illustrative. A rocket is fired at Israel from Gaza on August 9, 2014. (AP/Dusan Vranic)

A rocket alert siren blared in the Eshkol region of southern Israel, near the border with the Gaza Strip, on Thursday afternoon.

The army said it was looking into the incident, but did not initially find any evidence of a rocket landing in Israel. The Iron Dome anti-rocket system was also not activated.

It was not immediately clear what set off the system, but Israel was investigating the possibility that it was triggered by an internal Egyptian clash near the border.

The rocket alert system is automatic so it is not always apparent what causes it to activate. For instance, missiles that land within the Strip can set off the siren, and there have also been cases of total false alarms.

The past few months have been relatively quiet along the Gaza border in terms of rocket fire, as the Hamas terror organization has been working to prevent other extremist groups from disturbing the precarious ceasefire reached after the 2014 Gaza war.

Israeli military officials have called the past two years the most peaceful period on the Gaza border in over a decade, since the Israeli disengagement from the coastal enclave.