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Itongadol.- Rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into the area of the Shaar Hanegev regional council on Thursday night. At least one rocket is believed to have exploded but no injuries or damage were reported.
Air raid sirens sounded in the southern town of Sderot and communities surrounding Gaza. Residents reported hearing explosions close to their communities.
"We heard the siren, grabbed our child and rushed to the safe room," said Adi Betan Meiri, a resident of Sderot. "At first we thought it was a false alarm, probably because the rain had messed up the siren. Then we heard a loud explosion. The child was very scared, as were we. We closed the steel shutter which had been open for months."
A resident of Kibbutz NIr said that he had just returned with his family from Independence Day celebrations in the center of the country when they heard the siren. They were running towards a nearby bus stop when they heard the explosion.
The Israel Defense Forces said that they were looking for the landing site of the rocket.
Sderot, which is close to the Gaza border, has long been the target of rockets fired by Hamas.
Sirens went off in the Eshkol region, on the border with Gaza, last November and residents reported hearing explosions. The IDF at the time attributed the explosions to Hamas firing tests, saying that a rocket had fallen near the border area but within the strip.
A week earlier the "Red Code" system identified a rocket fired into Israel from Gaza, but the siren wasn\’t operated and the landing site of the rocket was never found.
The crossings between Gaza and Israel were closed as a result of the firing.