Israel Police: "Gaza Rocket Hits South Israel"

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The rocket landed near Ashkelon on Tuesday morning and caused some damage to a road near the city, but no injuries were reported, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah movement, claimed the responsibility for the rocket attack. It was the first such strike since the end of Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip in November 2012, during which Palestinian resistance fighters also fired a thousand rockets into Israel in retaliation for the Israeli regime’s deadly airstrikes on the besieged territory. The two sides agreed to a truce on November 21 after the eight-day war on Gaza. The violence killed 177 Palestinians and injured some 1,200 others. The strike came after days of clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank that erupted over the death of Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat, who died in Israel’s Magiddo jail on Saturday because of extreme torture.Israeli prison officials claimed that Jaradat, a 30-year-old father of two, had died of a cardiac attack. However, the Palestinian Authority’s Minister for Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Qaraqea said the prisoner’s autopsy showed fractures in his body and skull due to torture, while his heart was in good condition. Palestinians have been holding regular protests demanding the release of prisoners, but tensions have escalated after Jaradat’s death. Following Jaradat’s death, about 3,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails launched a one-day hunger strike on Sunday to voice their outrage at the incident. More than 4,500 Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli prisons, many of them without charge or trial.End item/ 149