Katyusha rocket aimed at Israel
Katyusha rocket aimed at IsraelIsrael news photo: Flash 90

Terrorists in southern Lebanon fired a Katyusha rocket on the Upper Galilee shortly after 7 p.m. (1 p.m. EDT). No one was wounded and no damage was reported, but a fire broke out at the site of the explosion. The IDF retaliated with half a dozen rounds of artillery fire.

The explosion occurred near Kiryat Shmona, and police and civil defense authorities are searching for the point of impact. Lebanese authorities confirmed that the rocket was fired from a village near the Israeli border.

The rocket may have been fired by a terrorist cell not directly connected with Hizbullah.

Earlier in the day, Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited the area and said, “Quiet has been maintained here for nine years after many years of attacks and the painful five-week period of the Second Lebanon War." Tuesday's attack was at least the ninth since the end of the war in 2006.

United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) forces have been mandated to keep Hizbullah out of southern Lebanon as part of the ceasefire agreement to which Israel agreed to end the Second Lebanon War in August 2006.

Its commanders said at the outset that they would not carry out the mandate to disarm, Hizbullah, which is estimated to have stockpiled between 60,000 and 80,000 rockets since the end of the war, more than three times the amount it possessed before it attacked Israel with more than 1,000 rockets.