Gaza rocket strikes field south of Ashkelon; none injured
Second attack in three days comes after Hamas threatens to hit back over Israeli retaliatory bombardment of Strip
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck an open field south of the coastal city of Ashkelon on Wednesday night, causing neither injury nor damage, the army said, the second attack in a week.
The alert siren did not go off, as the rocket was headed toward an unpopulated area.
The projectile struck the Hof Ashkelon region shortly after 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Israeli troops began searching the area to locate the rocket, the army said.
No terrorist groups immediately took credit for the attack.
There were also no immediate reports of IDF retaliation.
On Monday, a rocket was launched from Gaza towards the Sha’ar Hanegev region, striking an open field.
Hours later, Israeli Air Force jets bombed multiple targets in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli tanks along the border also fired at several targets, according to AFP. Gaza’s health ministry said four Gazans were moderately injured by airstrikes east of Rafah, according to Palestinian reports.
On February 6, a rocket fired from northern Gaza also hit an open field in the Hof Ashkelon region, in the first salvo of a day-long exchange between the IDF and terrorist groups in the Strip.
At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not tolerate a “drizzle” of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip “without a response.”
“My policy is to respond strongly to any rocket fire,” Netanyahu said. “We are firm in this response.”
Most rocket attacks since the 2014 war have been carried out by radical Salafist groups, not by Hamas. However, Israel holds Hamas, the Sunni terror group that has ruled the coastal enclave for the past 10 years, as ultimately responsible for any rocket fire emanating from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas’s military wing threatened Tuesday to retaliate against Israel should the Jewish state strike Gaza.
“The enemy only understands the language of force, and sometimes silence is interpreted as weakness by the enemy. Therefore, any aggression along the lines of what happened yesterday, the resistance, headed by the Qassam Brigades, will have their say,” Abu Obeida, the official spokesperson of Hamas’s military wing the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades told the terror group’s Al Aqsa TV station.
Tuesday also saw an incident in which the incoming missile siren blared in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, northeast of the Gaza Strip, but no missile actually struck.
It was not clear what caused Tuesday’s false alarm. However, a military spokesperson said it did not appear to have been triggered by a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip that failed to cross the border into Israel.
Dov Lieber contributed to this report.
