Israel - Two Katyusha Rockets Fired at Eilat From Sinai, lands in Aqaba

Two Katyusha rockets were fired early Thursday morning from Egypt's Sinai Penninsula toward the southern Israeli city of Eilat. This was the first time a rocket has been fired at the resort town in almost five years. 

The two rockets - each measuring 107 millimeters in diameter - struck a cooling storage house in Jordan's Red Sea port of Aqaba, said Jordanian officials. There were no casualties. 

The defense establishment and the Jordanian security forces coordinated an investigation into the matter, after initial reports placed the source of the rockets in southern Jordan. No militant group has taken responsibility for the incident yet. 

Jordanian police found the remains of a Katyusha rocket and were trying to determine the launch site and who might have been behind the attack, the security official said. 

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the investigation was ongoing, declined to say if the remains of the rocket were found at the warehouse or elsewhere in Aqaba. 

Eilat residents reported hearing the explosion at around 5 A.M. An Israeli supervisor at the Sinai border instructed police to close down the crossing and to warn tourists in the area. 

Security forces and police scoured the area, but found no indication of what caused the explosion. Shortly after, the crossing was reopened to traffic. 

Eilat, at the northern tip of the Red Sea, is a popular resort for Israelis and foreign holiday-makers, and was largely spared the violence faced by other Israeli cities during the intifada and subsquent years. The city was hit in January 2007 by a suicide bomber, leaving three people dead. 

About two weeks ago, Israel issued an urgent travel warning its citizens to leave Sinai due to a kidnapping alert. 

The Counter-Terrorism Bureau issued a strongly worded statement, citing intelligence information about immediate plans to abduct an Israeli to Gaza, via a smuggling tunnel. 

Initially, the defense establishment believed that the rockets fired on Thursday originated in Jordan. In August 2005, Al-Qaida operatives in Aqaba fired three Katyusha rockets at a U.S. Sixth Fleet ship. One struck a military facility in the Aqaba port, killing one Jordanian soldier and wounding another; another fell near the Eilat Airport and the city's hospital. 

In 2001, Jordan's security forces captured Hezbollah activists from Lebanon who planned to fire missiles at Eilat from Aqaba. A year later, an unknown Beirut-based organization said it was planning to bomb several areas in Israel from Jordan, including Eilat, Beit She'an and Tiberias.

Haaretz