Several rockets were fired Thursday before dawn from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, according to the Israeli army and witnesses from the Palestinian side.
Six rockets were fired, the Israeli army said in a statement. Five were intercepted by its air defense system while one fell in an uninhabited area.
Witnesses on the Palestinian side told AFP they saw at least eight rockets fired.
No casualties were reported by Israel’s emergency services immediately after the firing.
But the rockets triggered warning sirens in the cities of Sderot and Ashkelon, not far from the Gaza Strip, at around 4:00 am local time (0200 GMT), the Israeli army said.
The attack comes after an Israeli army raid Wednesday in Nablus, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, during which 11 Palestinians were killed.
More than 80 others were shot and injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The death toll Wednesday surpassed that of an Israeli army raid last month in Jenin, further north, which had been the deadliest West Bank operation since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, of 2000 to 2005.
Ziad al-Nakhala, leader of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad militant group, called the raid a “major crime” that “the resistance must respond to.”