The remains of a rocket likely fired into southern Israel duringBarack Obama’s visit to Israel l ast month were found in a kindergarten in Sderot, police stated.
The rocket’s remains were not located previously because the kindergarten had been closed for the Passover holiday, police added.
Police sappers were on the scene to safely dispose of the rocket.
Palestinian terrorists fired a number of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel on the second day of Obama’s visit on March 21.
One projectile hit and damaged a home in Sderot. A second fell in an open area of the neighboring Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council. Initial reports spoke of four rockets, two of which were not located and were believed to have landed within the Gaza Strip. The rocket discovered on Tuesday is presumably one of the rockets initially believed to have fallen in Gaza.
No one was injured in the attacks.
Senior security sources said they believed that a small terrorist organization in Gaza was behind the attack, and not Hamas. A Salafi group calling itself Magles Shoura al-Mujahddin said in an Internet statement that it had fired the rockets to show that Israeli air defenses could not stop attacks on the Jewish state during Obama’s visit.
The US president, who was in Jerusalem, about 80 km. from Sderot, when the rockets hit, later told journalists it was up to Hamas, which controls Gaza, to stop such strikes.
“We condemn this violation of the important ceasefire that protects both Israelis and Palestinians, a violation Hamas has a responsibility to prevent,” Obama said on the next stop on his visit, in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.
