A rocket was launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Monday evening, at around 9 PM. The rocket landed in the Eshkol region. No one was injured or damaged from the attack. The Red Alert siren did not sound as tracking indicated the rocket would land in an open area.
The IDF began retaliating around 10 PM on Monday nigh. The IDF reports that tank fire was used against targets in Gaza, and Israeli aircraft hit Hamas underground infrastructures.
On Sunday, a bundle of balloons with an attached suspicious package was discovered in Moshav Tidhar near Ofakim in southern Israel. A sapper was called to the scene and neutralized the suspicious object that was connected to the bundle. According to Israel, this was the first incendiary balloon launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel since February, but some reports suggest otherwise.
Israel had reportedly agreed to allow Qatar to transfer $50 million to Gaza, and in return, the terrorist organizations in Gaza have agreed to stop the launching of incindeary balloons from the Gaza Strip to Israel. According to another Arab report, Hamas instructed the balloon teams to halt their operations for the time being after receiving guarantees about the Qatari money entering Gaza.
According to al Akhbar, the Israeli approval came one day after Hamas carried out an experimental launch into the sea of an Iranian Fajr 5C, a long-range rocket developed by Tehran during the 1990s. The Fajr 5 multiple launcher fires four 6.48 meter long, 333 millimeter Fajr-5 artillery rockets, with a range of 50 miles, weighing 915 kilograms each and carrying 175-kg fragmentation warheads with 90 kg of high explosive. In 2017, Iran introduced a variant of the Fajr 5C equipped with GPS guidance.