Five rockets were fired from the northern Gaza Strip at the coastal city of Ashdod on Wednesday evening during Yom Kippur, in a barrage later claimed by Hamas.
According to the IDF, four of the rockets were intercepted by air defenses, and one landed in an open area.
There were no reports of injuries or damage.
The attack came on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, and as the Israeli Navy prepared to intercept the large flotilla attempting to break the Israeli maritime blockade on the Gaza Strip — ultimately, the IDF said that none of the vessels reached the Gazan coast.
Sirens rang out in the southern city as thousands of observant Jews were in synagogues and while secular Israelis took advantage of the deserted roads and highways, they took to the streets on their bicycles.
On Thursday, the Hamas terror group took responsibility for the rocket barrage. In a statement, the terror group’s military wing said it targeted Ashdod “in response to the targeting of civilians.”
Rocket fire from Gaza was once an intermittent fact of life for southern Israel.
But such salvos, especially long-range attacks with multiple projectiles, have become increasingly rare as the war has progressed, with terror groups’ launching capabilities hindered by the IDF’s ground offensive.
Earlier on Wednesday, terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip fired two rockets at southern Israel, which were intercepted by the IDF. The attack triggered sirens in Gaza border communities.
Also on Wednesday, a drone launched by the Houthis in Yemen at Israel was intercepted by the Israeli Air Force, the military said.
The drone was shot down off the coast of Eilat, but no sirens sounded, “according to protocol,” the IDF said, because it did not pose a threat.
The Iran-backed Houthis — whose slogan calls for “Death to America, Death to Israel, [and] a Curse on the Jews” — began attacking Israel and maritime traffic in November 2023, a month after the October 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel that launched the war in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes and gunfire overnight and into Thursday killed at least 41 Palestinians in Gaza, according to hospitals in the Strip, as Hamas was still considering its response to US President Donald Trump’s proposal for ending the nearly two-year war, sparked by the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre.
Gazan health authorities tied to Hamas said at least 27 people were killed by Israeli fire in southern Gaza, with 14 of them killed in an Israeli military corridor.
Officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah said they had received 13 dead from Israeli strikes. In Gaza City, health officials at Shifa Hospital, which Israel has long said is a key terror base for Hamas, said they received one body and several wounded people.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 66,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
The rocket and drone attacks and IDF strikes came as Hamas was set to respond to a US hostage-ceasefire proposal that Israel has agreed to.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump presented a ceasefire-hostage deal proposal in a joint press conference at the White House with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accepted the offer.
The proposal would release the remaining 48 hostages within 72 hours. In exchange, Israel would release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences; 1,700 Gazans, including all women and children, detained since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza; and 15 bodies of deceased Gazans for every body of an Israeli hostage.
The proposal would also require a three-phase Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, disarm Hamas, demilitarize Gaza, ensure uninhibited humanitarian aid to the Strip, and hand the enclave over to an international transitional government without Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas has refused to disarm absent Palestinian statehood, which Israel rejects, and until “the occupation” is ended. It regards Israel’s existence as an occupation, and avowedly seeks to destroy the Jewish state
The deal is supported by European, Arab and Muslim countries, as well as the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has yet to formally respond to the offer. Trump said Tuesday that the terror group would have “three or four” days to do so.