Sunday, December 29, 2013

29-Dec-13: Israel's north faces fresh round of terrorist rocket attacks

It's Sunday morning, and after several incoming rockets on communities in Israel's south, Haaretz is reporting that there has been a rocket attack on Israel's northern border. Times of Israel's report says it happened around 7:00 am.

Two rockets exploded in the vicinity of Kiryat Shmona, a town of some 23,000 people located near the border with Lebanon. Ynet says the incoming-rocket warning sirens did not sound. Haaretz, quoting the IDF, says they are Katyusha rockets, which we know to be heavily stocked by Hezbollah, and that they exploded in an open area west of the town. No casualties or damage are reported so far. Times of Israel says the landing was in forested land close to the border.

Two additional rockets, believed to be fired by the Hezbollah terrorist forces arrayed right across southern Lebanon, fell short; a Lebanese news report quoted by Times of Israel says those two other rockets fell near the village of Sarda, 10 kilometers from Marjayoun near the border with Israel. That's an area where the UNIFIL troops who are busy keeping the peace have a large presence. This being a Sunday morning, and the week between Xmas and New Years and who knows? They may have been distracted with seasonal festivities.

None of this, of course, is child's play. Though it will have gone little noticed outside Israel (which is the case with most of the near-daily terrorist-originating attacks on Israeli civilian targets), an Israeli serviceman was killed earlier in December while driving an unprotected vehicle along the Israeli side of the border road near the resort town of Rosh Hanikra. Shlomi Cohen, 31, was shot by a lone Lebanese Army soldier, close to the the spot where a bomb had blown up an army jeep, injuring four soldiers, in August of this year. Also during August, four Katyusha rockets were fired into Israel by terrorist forces in Lebanon ["22-Aug-13: Volley of rockets from Lebanon crashes into northern Israel, seeking civilian victims"].

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