JNS
The IDF earlier announced the thwarting of an "immediate" rocket launch by the terrorist group.
A Hamas rocket barrage on central Israel injured two people in Kfar Chabad, southeast of Tel Aviv, on Monday, the first anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group's Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
Eli Bin, director of the Magen David Adom emergency service, reported that two people were lightly wounded by shrapnel.
MDA tweeted that "in the Sdot Dan region, MDA EMTs and Paramedics are treating 2 female casualties in mild condition with shrapnel injuries and evacuating them to hospital," adding that other locations were being searched.
The Israel Defense Forces said that five rockets were fired from the Khan Yunis area in southern Gaza, with several impacts detected. Police said that fragments from an interception struck an open area in Holon, south of Tel Aviv.
The IDF initially said that "sirens sounded in central Israel due to projectiles fired from the Gaza Strip."
Alarms were activated in Tel Aviv, Bat Yam, Rishon Letzion and other cities.
On Monday afternoon, the IDF said that fighter jets struck and destroyed the rocket launchers in Khan Yunis used in the attack on central Israel, adding that secondary explosions were seen following the strike, indicating that additional weapons were stored in the area.
Following the rocket fire at central Israel, the IDF told Gazans to evacuate the Khan Yunis area to the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone.
“Due to Hamas’s terrorist acts, which will be met with extreme force, you must evacuate these areas immediately and move to the humanitarian area,” Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman said, publishing a map of the zones to be evacuated.
Also on Monday afternoon, the Air Force intercepted five launches that crossed from the northern Gaza Strip, which had set off sirens in Israeli communities surrounding the coastal enclave, the IDF said.
The IDF later said that Artillery Brigade 215 attacked the launcher that fired at Gaza border towns.
Earlier on Monday morning, the IDF said it had thwarted "an immediate threat" by Hamas to fire rockets at Israel.
"The IDF thwarted an immediate threat, following prior preparations and the identification of the intention of the terrorist organization Hamas to launch fire toward the territory of the State of Israel," the army said.
Palestinian terrorists fired rockets at Ashkelon from the Gaza Strip on Sunday afternoon, sending some of the Israeli city’s 150,000-plus residents running to bomb shelters for the first time in three weeks.
IDF ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27 following weeks of airstrikes in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and abducted more than 250.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defined the war goals for Gaza as returning the hostages, eliminating Hamas’s capabilities and ensuring that the coastal enclave will never again constitute a threat.
More than 26,000 rockets, missiles and drones have been launched at Israel by Iran and its regional terror proxies since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the latest Israel Defense Forces data.
As of Oct. 2, there have been 13,200 launches from the Gaza Strip, 12,400 from Lebanon, 400 from Iran, 180 from Yemen and 60 from Syria.
