Israel says Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a rocket at its southern territories
Mar 18, 2023 2:44pm ET
• 2 minutes reading time
JERUSALEM – The Israeli military said Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket into southern Israel on Saturday night.
The rocket fell and exploded in an open area, triggering warning sirens in the community of Nahal Oz, east of Gaza City.
There were no reports of casualties or damage. The Israeli military usually responds to such rocket fire with airstrikes in Hamas-ruled Gaza, raising the possibility of further violence just before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The rocket attack comes a day before Israeli and Palestinian officials are due to meet in Egypt to defuse US-backed efforts to defuse violence that has been mounting for nearly a year, particularly in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
The meeting in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh is a follow-up to last month’s meeting in Jordan for the same purpose. However, since the February 26 meeting in Aqaba, deadly Israeli raids in the West Bank and Palestinian attacks have continued. Since then, 23 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed in the ongoing bloodshed.
Since the beginning of this year, 85 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. Palestinian attacks on Israelis have killed 14 people in the same period.
According to a tally by the Associated Press, about half of the Palestinians killed that year were linked to militant groups. Israel says most of the dead were militants. But stone-throwing youth protesting the assaults, some in their early teens, and others not involved in confrontations, including three men over 60, were also killed.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2022, making it the deadliest year in those areas since 2004, according to leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Palestinian attacks on Israelis killed 30 people at the same time.
Israel conquered the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War. The Palestinians seek these areas for their future independent state.