Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip launched a rocket that landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot on Sunday and Israeli aircraft and tanks responded by shelling the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the army and police said.
The rocket caused no injuries or damage in Sderot, where it landed in a residential area, police said. An Israeli shell damaged a Beit Hanoun water tower and there were no casualties, local residents said.
The Israeli army said aircraft and tanks had targeted two Hamas posts belonging to Islamist Hamas militants.
Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and has observed a de-facto ceasefire with Israel since a 2014 war but some small armed cells of Jihadist Salafis have defied the agreement and have continued to occasionally launch rockets at Israel.
More than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.
Despite the ceasefire, Hamas has vowed to continue to dig tunnels intended to infiltrate Israel, and while Hamas leaders stress they do not seek an imminent war, they see tunnels as a strategic weapon in any future armed confrontation.
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Rocket sirens sounded in Sderot and nearby communities on the Gaza border, at 2:25 P.M. Minutes later rocket debris was found in a street in Sderot.
Yaron Shadadi, a Sderot resident whose home suffered a direct hit in 2012, told Haaretz that he and his family were at home when the rocket was fired and ran to the shelter in their home when they heard the sirens. They then heard a dull thud, he said, and thought it was from an explosion at some distance away, but they then discovered that it had fallen near a neighbor's home and had apparently not exploded.
Police called on the public to stay away of the site where the rocket fell.
Shmaryahu Nagar, who also lives very near the site where the rocket fell, told Haaretz the rocket fell next to the home of a young couple who were not home at the time. Nagar was at home with his son and the son alerted him to the rocket warning. The two ran to their secure room, he said, and then "there was a kind of noise of a strange screech and a boom."
Last month, a rocket fired from Gaza hit an early childhood development center in Sderot. Nearby buildings were also damaged, but no casualties were reported.
The Israel Air Force at the time hit what the Israeli army said were four Hamas targets in southern and central Gaza.
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