Rocket from Gaza lands in open area in Israel

Mortar lands in Eshkol Regional Council, no injuries, damaged caused; police find rocket remains at Sderot kindergarten.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Sderot rocket during Obama visit 390 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Sderot rocket during Obama visit 390
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Palestinians fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel on Tuesday afternoon.
The rocket, landed near the Israel-Gaza border fence in the Eshkol Regional Council. It landed in an open area and did not cause any injuries or damage.
Palestinian terrorists fired a number of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel on the second day of US President Barack Obama's visit on March 21. No one was injured in the attacks.
One projectile hit and damaged a home in Sderot. A second fell in an open area of the neighboring Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council. Initial reports spoke of four rockets, two of which were not located and were believed to have landed within the Gaza Strip.
Earlier Tuesday, police found the remains of a rocket likely fired into southern Israel during Obama's visit to Israel last month, in a kindergarten in Sderot. It is presumably one of the rockets initially believed to have fallen in Gaza.
The rocket's remains were not located previously because the kindergarten had been closed for the Passover holiday, police added.
Police sappers were on the scene to safely dispose of the rocket.
Senior security sources said they believed that a small terrorist organization in Gaza was behind the attack, and not Hamas. A Salafi group calling itself Magles Shoura al-Mujahddin said in an Internet statement that it had fired the rockets to show that Israeli air defenses could not stop attacks on the Jewish state during Obama’s visit.
The US president, who was in Jerusalem, about 80 km. from Sderot, when the rockets hit, later told journalists it was up to Hamas, which controls Gaza, to stop such strikes.
“We condemn this violation of the important ceasefire that protects both Israelis and Palestinians, a violation Hamas has a responsibility to prevent,” Obama said on the next stop on his visit, in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
JPost.com staff contributed to this report.