BICOM

Three Grad rockets were fired from the northern Gaza Strip at Ashdod and Bnei Aish areas shortly before midnight Wednesday. No injuries have been reported, but a number of people were treated for shock. Sirens were heard in the towns of Ashdod, Kiryat Malachi, Rehovot, Ness Ziona and Gan Yavne. This was the first time that missiles of this type reached the area, which is not protected by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, and the first time that sirens have been sounded in Rehovot. Quiet has largely prevailed between Israel and Hamas-controlled Gaza since an unofficial ceasefire was reinstated after five days of violence in August.

No group has claimed responsibility for the missile launching. But Israeli officials quoted in Haaretz said that they considered that Hamas was unlikely to be behind the attack, since the group had a clear interest in maintaining stability at the present time. Rather, a smaller faction opposed to Hamas was probably responsible.

Responding to the attack, the Israel Air Force targeted three centres of terror activity and a weapons storage site in the Gaza Strip in the early hours of this morning, according to a statement by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. All targets were hit, and all planes returned safely, the statement added.

In related news this morning, Haaretz reports that Hamas has recently managed to smuggle relatively advanced Russian made missiles, which were looted from Libyan military warehouses, into the Gaza Strip. Israel is worried about the presence of these missiles, because they both curb the air force’s ability to target terror related facilities in the strip and because of their possible use against civil aviation in Eilat.

Shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles have been smuggled into Gaza in recent years at Iran’s initiative. But the fall of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya has enabled Hamas to bring in much higher quality missiles at larger quantities.