Army nabs infiltrator from Gaza armed with bomb, knives, grenade

The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday evening it had caught a man who crossed the border from the Gaza Strip while armed with an improvised bomb, a grenade, and two knives.

The army said he was intercepted as he crossed the border in the southern region of the Palestinian enclave and then taken away for questioning.

No one was hurt in the incident.

At end of last month, a community security officer was injured in the hand, after he intercepted a knife-wielding terrorist who entered from the Strip and reached a public road.

The incidents came as much of southern Israel remained on edge, less than a month after a round of intense fighting between Israel and the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group drew to a close.

Thirteen people in Israel, all but one of them civilians, were killed, as southern Israel was pummeled by rockets. Over 250 people were reported killed in Gaza by the Hamas-run health ministry during the 11 days of fighting. Israel maintains that most of those killed were combatants and that some Palestinians were killed by errant Hamas rockets, not Israeli airstrikes.

While Israel has a high-tech series of fences and walls guarding its frontier with Gaza, both above- and belowground, a number of gaps remain in the steel fencing surrounding the Strip. In times of low visibility, these gaps have been used by Palestinians in Gaza to illegally enter Israeli territory, often with hopes of fleeing the beleaguered enclave.

Attacks on Israeli civilians by those infiltrating from Gaza are rare.