A rocket fired from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula exploded overnight

A rocket fired from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula exploded overnight in the Israeli city of Eilat on the Red Sea, on Wednesday morning, but caused no injuries or damage, a senior police officer said .

“This rocket, which was taken from Egypt, exploded in the city, but caused no injuries or damage,” Eilat police chief District Ron Gertner told the army radio Israel.

Gertner said the incident occurred shortly after midnight (2100 GMT) when a Grad rocket hit a building site in the city,

Security officials standing at the targeted area

about 300 meters from an apartment block.

In all three heavy blows rocked the city, prompting hundreds of people anxious to ring the police emergency number, according to AFP.

“Residents of Eilat heard three explosions in the night, but for now we have only found a rocket,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. Police were searching to see if anything Another struck the city.

The Israeli military confirmed the details of the incident.

“The rocket exploded in the city but there were no casualties or damage,” a military spokesman said.

The explosion occurred as thousands of Israeli tourists and foreigners descended on the resort to celebrate the holiday of a week of Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday.

It was the first such firing since the collapse of the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Since he was overthrown, a wave of unrest swept across the Sinai Peninsula bordering restive over Israel.

To unscramble infiltration, Israel was building a fence along the southern border of which it hopes to complete by the end of 2012. When it is finished, the fence will run most of the 266 km (165 miles) from Eilat on the Red Sea Gulf of Aqaba to Gaza on the Mediterranean already closed, according to Reuters.

In August 2011, a group of armed men in Sinai sneak across the border and carried out a series of deadly ambushes shooting, just north of Eilat, killing eight Israelis.

In the ensuing search for the gunmen, Israeli troops killed six policemen along the Egyptian border, sparked a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

A year earlier, several rockets fired from Sinai, which were apparently aimed at Eilat, slammed into the nearby Jordanian port of Aqaba, killing one person and wounding five others.

A similar attack took place in April 2011, when two rockets struck military grade of Aqaba, a collision with an empty warehouse and the other landed in the Red Sea near the Israeli border.

And in August 2005, three Katyusha rockets were fired at Aqaba in an attack claimed by a group linked to al Qaeda.

The two Red Sea ports are located on the northernmost point of the Gulf of Aqaba, a narrow stretch of water bordered on one side by the Sinai and the other by Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Source:http://www.latestcnnnews.com/rocket-attack-on-israeli-city-of-eliat-from-egyp...