JERUSALEM, Aug 18, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired
three rockets at southern Israel on Saturday night, the Israeli army said,
the second attack in 24 hours.
“Three projectiles were recognised to have been launched from the Gaza
Strip into Israeli territory,” the English-language WhatsApp statement said.
“Two projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome aerial defence system.”
There were no reports of casualties but police said that a rocket fragment
fell on a house in the southern town of Sderot.
The Israeli army’s statement did not say what happened to the third rocket.
Rockets falling in uninhabited areas after dark are often not located until
daylight.
Air raid sirens had sounded in Sderot and its surroundings.
Later, the army reported that an attack helicopter and tank fired at “a
number of armed suspects adjacent to the (border) fence in the northern Gaza
Strip.”
An army spokeswoman contacted by AFP could not say if the suspects were hit
and Palestinian authorities could not immediately confirm any casualties.
Saturday night’s incidents followed a rocket attack late Friday, which came
after a period of calm since mid-July.
In response, Israeli warplanes struck at least three targets in the Gaza
Strip early on Saturday but caused no casualties, a Palestinian security
source said.
The strikes hit a Hamas observation post in Beit Hanoun, in the northern
Gaza Strip, an unidentified target near Gaza City and open ground near Deir
El Balah in the central part of the territory, the source said.
An Israeli army statement mentioned only two strikes, against “underground
targets belonging to the Hamas terror organisation in the northern and
central Gaza Strip.”
It did not elaborate.
Israel and Hamas — the Islamist group that runs the Palestinian enclave of
Gaza — have fought three wars since 2008.