A militant group claiming ties with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party said Tuesday it fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip into Israel, the first cross- border violence in three months. The rocket landed in Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, Israeli media reports said, adding that it caused some damage on a road but did not hurt anybody.
Fahd El-Lil (Night's Leopard) group issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. The group said it was an offshoot of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah. The statement said the rocket was fired in response to the death of a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail Saturday.
"This is an initial natural response to the assassination of prisoner Arafat Jaradat," the statement said, adding that the Palestinians "should resist their enemy with all available means."
The Palestinians accused Israel of subjecting 30-year-old Jaradat to severe torture. The rocket is the first fired from Gaza since Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in November 2012. The ceasefire ended an eight-day clash, in which as many as 170 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed. Hamas, the Islamic movement that controls Gaza, has made no official comment regarding the rocket fire.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert Serry, said he was "deeply troubled by resumed indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza, which is totally unacceptable." "Today's developments only underscore the importance of ongoing Egyptian efforts to solidify the truce brokered last November," he added in a statement to the media.