UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov is interviewed on i24NEWS on February 21, 2017. (Screen capture/YouTube)
The United Nations’ special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, condemned a Palestinian rocket attack Wednesday night.
In a statement Thursday, Mladenov said, “Such provocations seek only to undermine peace.”
“This is the third such incident in the past 30 days after a period of almost four months of quiet,” he said, and called on all sides to employ restraint in order to avoid escalations “that jeopardize the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.”
The rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck an open field south of the coastal city of Ashkelon on Wednesday night, causing no injury or damage.
The alert siren did not go off, as the rocket was headed toward an unpopulated area.
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Illustrative: Palestinian missiles are fired from Gaza City toward Israel following Israeli airstrikes on July 17, 2014. (AFP/Thomas Coex)
No terrorist groups took immediate credit for the attack, and there have been no reports of IDF retaliation.
It was the third such attack from Gaza in the last month.
On Monday, a rocket was launched from Gaza toward 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.
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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 daylong 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.”
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