Two rockets from Sinai hit southern Israel, IDF says
No injury or damage caused by the projectiles, which land near Gaza; incoming missile alert system doesn’t go off
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
Two rockets fired from the Sinai Peninsula struck an open field in southern Israel on Monday morning, the army said.
No one was injured and no damage was caused by the missiles, the army said.
The rockets hit the Eshkol region, which borders southern Gaza and the northeastern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.
A police bomb disposal unit found one of them near the community of Naveh, near the Egyptian border. A second sapper team was on its way to the location of the other rocket, police said.
The incoming rocket alert system was not activated as the projectiles were not headed toward a populated area.
No group took credit for the rocket attack, but the incident came hours after the Islamic State in Sinai accused Israel of killing five of its members in an airstrike.
According to Amaq news agency, an official media arm of the terror group, an Israeli drone struck a car with five Islamic State members in a village in the northern Sinai near the Egypt-Israel border on Saturday.
The strike occurred near the village of Shabana, south of the town of Rafah, Amaq said.
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to The Times of Israel’s request for comment, but generally refrains from confirming or denying strikes outside of Israel.
The reported attack came after tensions between Israel and the Islamic State’s affiliate in Sinai ratcheted up earlier this month.
On February 8, the group, known as the Sinai Province, shot four rockets at the southern Israeli city of Eilat.
Three of the four rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile system, the army said.
A military spokesperson said the fourth rocket was not shot down by the missile defense battery as it was headed toward an open field.
Sinai Province claimed the rocket attack on Eilat early the next day.
February 9 also saw two Palestinians killed in a mysterious explosion in Rafah, which the Hamas terror group claimed was the result of an Israeli airstrike carried out in retaliation for the rockets.
Israel denied it had carried out any airstrikes in the area.
The Islamic State in Sinai has been waging a bloody battle against Egyptian forces in recent years.
Last month, Israel ordered all of its citizens in the Sinai Peninsula to leave immediately due to security threats.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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