Israel strikes Gaza after rocket: eyewitnesses, security sources

Israeli jets struck  Gaza early Thursday morning, witnesses and security sources said, hours after militants in the besieged enclave fired a rocket into the Jewish state.

The strikes, the second in 48 hours after a previous rocket strike, were concentrated on the centre of the blockaded coastal territory, they said.

A rocket was fired from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza into Israel late on Wednesday, the Israeli army said, despite Hamas warning other factions to refrain from firing rockets.

"A rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory," the military said in a brief statement.

Local police said that a fragment of the rocket had fallen in a yard of a house in the southern Israeli city of Sderot.

There were no injuries, the police said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Israeli police blocked crowds of Jewish ultra-nationalist protesters from approaching the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, in a bid to contain tensions.

Early on Tuesday, Israel carried out its first air strikes on the Gaza Strip in months in response to a rocket fired the previous night from the blockaded enclave, which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.

Last year, similar events sparked an 11-day war that levelled parts of Gaza.