Rocket volley from Gaza lightly damages Sderot home as attacks surge

Gazans fired three rockets into southern Israel Monday morning, lightly damaging the home of a local religious leader and marking the latest attack amid a return to near-daily launches terrorizing southern residents.

One of the three rockets shot from the northern Gaza Strip landed in the city of Sderot, the military said. A second projectile was intercepted, and a third apparently landed in an uninhabited area.

There were no casualties in the attack, though a 68-year-old woman required hospitalization for light injuries sustained while rushing to find shelter as air raid sirens sounded in the city and other communities bordering the Gaza Strip, the Magen David Adom emergency service reported.

Residents of the area have mere seconds to take cover when rocket warnings sound and injuries stemming from panic are not uncommon.

According to the Ynet news outlet, the rocket that hit Sderot slammed into the yard of the home of local Chabad emissaries Rabbi Hananel and Tzviah Pizam.

The rocket broke a fence and damaged a walkway, while sending debris flying. According to the report, shrapnel also hit a gas tank, causing a temporary leak but no explosion.

The Pizams said the attack was the third time the home had been a hit by a rocket from Gaza. The home had not yet been repaired from the last time it was damaged.

“It is terrible — not the first time, not the second,” Tzviah Pizam told Ynet. “We thought that it was over, and it hit the gas canister.”

הירי מעזה: פגיעה במבנה בשדרות
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Pinhas Cohen, who has an office in the street where the rocket landed, told the Kan public broadcaster that “we flew out of our seats from the shockwave; it was an especially large explosion.”

The attack ended a short-lived period of calm on Sunday, which followed nine consecutive days of rocket attacks since December 27.

Over 20 rockets were launched in that time, mostly from the Strip’s far north town of Beit Hanoun, where the IDF is currently carrying out a major offensive against Hamas.

Rocket attacks from Gaza had largely stopped since the spring of 2024, which was attributed to Israeli military gains against the Hamas terror group and its formerly massive arsenal in Gaza. Most of the rocket strikes in recent days have been launched from northern Gaza, where fighting has intensified since October amid Israeli attempts to keep Hamas from regrouping there.

The Palestinian terror group has previously fired rockets from areas where the IDF is advancing, to prevent the military from capturing them.

Israel has stepped up strikes in Gaza recently, carrying out over 100 airstrikes over the weekend, according to the IDF.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that 49 people were killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll of the war to 45,854. The number could not be verified and does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.

Israel and Hamas have been at war for nearly 15 months since the Palestinian terror group invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and abducting 251 as hostages to Gaza.

That attack, during which rampaging terrorists murdered at least 70 people in Sderot, was launched under cover of a barrage of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza across many areas of Israel.

Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November 2024 as well as another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7 and the days that followed.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

The war has caused immense damage to Gaza’s infrastructure and some 1.9 million Palestinians of the 2.3 million population are residing in the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone,” according to IDF assessments in July.

As winter sets in, the harsh weather is creating further problems for an already major humanitarian crisis in which aid deliveries are struggling to reach some areas of Gaza, particularly the north. Israel says that Hamas and other armed groups are looting many of those that do arrive.

The Palestinian Authority official news agency WAFA reported that an infant died Monday from the cold.

Yousef Ahmed Anwar Kalloub had lived for just 35 days, according to the report.

His death brought to eight the number of fatalities due to the weather, WAFA said, of whom seven were children. Similar to other statistics from Gaza, the figures could not be verified.

US, Egyptian, and Qatari mediators have tried for over a year to negotiate a ceasefire deal that would see the hostages released; reports have indicated the sides were inching close to inking an agreement amid a recent push.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced confidence Monday that a ceasefire deal in Gaza would come together, but possibly after US President Joe Biden leaves office on January 20.

US President-elect Donald Trump, who takes over on January 20, has vowed even stronger support for Israel and has warned Hamas of “hell to pay” if it does not free hostages seized in the October 7, 2023, attack.

Blinken said there had been an “intensified engagement” by Hamas on reaching a deal, but that it was not yet complete.

It is believed that 96 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 38 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.

Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.