Rocket sirens blare in south as Sinai fighting heats up
IDF says alert a false alarm; reports of explosions were from fighting on Egyptian side of the border
Rocket sirens blared in several communities adjacent to the southern Gaza Strip Wednesday evening in what the IDF said was a false alarm.
Residents of the Eshkol region reported at least two explosions, but the army said they were apparently the reverberations from fighting on the Egyptian side of the border.
There were no rockets fired into Israel, the army said.
The army has reportedly beefed up its troop presence along the Israel-Egypt border in light of the increase in hostilities between the Islamic State and Egyptian forces in the northern Sinai, Channel 10 reported.
The incident came hours after the Israeli military announced it had developed a new short-range missile interceptor system that could be mounted on a ship, using the same technology as the Iron Dome system, and intended to protect against attack from Gaza aimed at offshore assets.
Tensions between Israel and Gaza seemed to spiral earlier this month, with several violent cross-border exchanges.
Israeli troops and Hamas forces engaged in a series of exchanges after Israel uncovered a Hamas attack tunnel burrowing into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. It was the second such tunnel discovered in a month, using what Israel said was a secret new technology.
Israel has vowed to continue operating to uncover more tunnels but officials maintain that Hamas’s tunnel infrastructure is far from the robust network the group possessed before the 2014 Gaza war, and includes a small number of tunnels only.
Despite the ongoing efforts to destroy the underground threat, Israeli officials have stressed that they do not believe there is a substantial danger of renewed conflict on the Gaza border. Hamas has also conveyed to Israel through Egypt that it does not seek escalation.
During the 2014 war, called Operation Protective Edge in Israel, Hamas used its attack tunnels with devastating effect on a number of occasions to ambush IDF soldiers.
The military said it destroyed at least 34 such tunnels during the 50-day conflict.