Islamic State-linked group claims attack on Israel border town

An Islamic State-affiliated group claimed responsibility for firing rockets on Thursday towards Israel's Red Sea resort of Eilat from Egypt's Sinai peninsula, an attack that Israel said caused no damage or casualties.

The Sinai Province group said it fired "a number of Grad rockets against gatherings of Zionist occupiers" in Eilat.

Israel's military said one the rockets launched from the Sinai towards Eilat landed harmlessly in an open area and the others were intercepted by its Iron Dome anti-missile system.

"What is coming is graver and more bitter," Sinai Province said on Telegram, an encrypted instant messaging system used by IS to communicate with followers.

IS-linked groups waging an insurgency against Egypt in the Sinai have claimed responsibility for past rocket attacks in the Eilat area.

In an apparently unrelated incident several hours after the rockets were fired, two Palestinians were killed along Gaza's border with Egypt when a tunnel beneath the frontier was bombed, Gaza's Health Ministry said, blaming Israel.

Israel denied it had carried out any strikes over the border into Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula in response to the rockets, which caused no casualties.

The spokesman of Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, Ashraf al-Qudra, named the two men killed as Hossam al-Sufi, 24, and Mohammed al-Aqra, 38. 

In the past, a labyrinth of smuggling tunnels linked the Sinai with Gaza. But since the 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after a single year in power, Egyptian authorities have moved to destroy them and have set up a wide no-go zone on the Gaza border.

Qudra said five people were also wounded in what he said was an Israeli strike.

Israeli army chief spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said: "Military officials denied Israel Defence Force involvement in the reported strike."

Under the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, there are restrictions on military deployments on the Sinai border monitored by international peacekeepers.

But since the militants launched their deadly insurgency in the wake of Morsi's overthrow, Egypt has poured troops and police into the peninsula with the blessing of Israel and Western governments.

Hundreds of Egyptian security personnel and civilians have been killed, particularly in the north Sinai near the Gaza border.

There have been periodic attacks into Israel.

In 2011, assailants who came from the Sinai killed eight Israelis in a triple ambush north of Eilat. Pursuing Israeli forces killed seven attackers and five Egyptian police.

In 2013, four militants were killed by an Egyptian air strike as they were about to fire a rocket at Israel, according to the Egyptian military.

And in 2014, two patrolling Israeli soldiers were wounded by unidentified men who fired an anti-tank weapon from the Sinai during an attempted drug-smuggling operation, according to the Israeli military.

In 2015, rockets fired from Sinai hit southern Israel without causing casualties. IS claimed responsibility.