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Israel strikes Gaza after rocket intercepted by Iron Dome

No injuries were reported on either side during the exchange of fire, Israeli and Palestinian media say
A rocket is fired from Gaza toward Israel on 24 April 2015 (AFP)

Israeli warplanes hit a number of locations in Gaza overnight, reports said, after Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system shot down a rocket fired from the Strip earlier on Tuesday.

The airstrikes targetted four sites "linked to Hamas" in the besieged coastal enclave, according to a military statement quoted in Israel's Haaretz newspaper.
 
The Palestinian news agency Maan quoted medical sources as saying there had been no injuries in the attacks.
 
Maan said airstrikes had hit a naval police site in northern Gaza, a Hamas military site nearby, and two Hamas sites in the south of the Strip.
 
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel's Iron Dome night intercepted a rocket fired at the coastal town of Ashdod, an Israeli security source said. A
 
An alert sounded in Ashdod before the anti-missile system destroyed the rocket.

Haaretz reported that the Palestinian projectile was a "grad-type" rocket, and was the first rocket to be fired at Ashdod since the 2014 on Gaza.

Tuesday's rocket fire came as sporadic clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians hit Jerusalem's Old City and a checkpoint outside Ramallah, with tensions heightened as Jewish Israelis celebrated the Sukkot holiday.

Israeli police also arrested two Palestinian minors for stone-throwing in Jerusalem, Maan reported.

The incidents followed fresh clashes on Monday at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, where security forces fired stun grenades and tear gas and Palestinians threw stones and petrol bombs while barricading themselves inside the shrine.

The Gaza Strip has been under a land and sea blockade by Israel and Gaza since 2007, when the Palestinian faction Hamas came to power in the tiny coastal territory. The blockade has severely limitted freedom of movement for the Strip's 1.8 million people, in addition to damaging its economy.

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