An Iron Dome missile is launched in Tel Aviv, to intercept a rocket fired from Gaza, November 17, 2012 (photo credit: AP/Oded Balilty)
Rocket sirens wailed in southern Tel Aviv and neighboring cities just before 3 a.m on Thursday. The IDF said it appeared to be a false alarm.
The sirens were heard in the southern neighborhoods of Tel Aviv and the cities of Holon, Bat Yam and Azur.
The false alarm came amid heightened tensions and threats of retaliations from a Palestinian terror group in Gaza whose tunnel was destroyed in an Israeli detonation on Monday.
On Monday, the IDF bombed an attack tunnel being built by the Islamic Jihad terror group extending from the Gazan city of Khan Younis into Israeli territory, near Kibbutz Kissufim.
Nine Palestinian terrorists — including two senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders and members of Hamas’s elite naval unit — were reported killed in the Israeli strike, and another five were still said missing as of Wednesday and are presumed dead.
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An Israeli soldier stands guard next to Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, designed to intercept and destroy incoming short-range rockets and artillery shells, deployed close to the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, near Kibbutz Kissufim in southern Israel, on October 30, 2017. (AFP PHOTO / MENAHEM KAHANA)
On Wednesday the IDF said it suspended construction on the underground barrier being built around the Gaza Strip on Wednesday out of concern that workers might come under attack.
The army also deployed the Iron Dome anti-rocket system in the area as a precaution.
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