Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip at the city of Ashkelon and nearby communities north of the Gaza Strip on Thursday night, the military said, the second attack in days following months of relative quiet along the border.

The Israel Defense Forces said one projectile was intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system. The second projectile appeared to land in an open field. No injuries or damage were reported.

The attack triggered sirens throughout Ashkelon and in several communities south of the city.

Video footage apparently showed the interception by the Iron Dome missile defense system over Ashkelon.

The attack came two days after a single rocket was fired at Israel, drawing a reprisal raid. A Gazan rocket was also fired at Israel on Friday.

Tuesday’s rocket attack occurred hours after the military announced uncovering what it said was a Hamas attack tunnel inside Israeli territory that had been dug from the Gaza Strip.

The so-called “terror tunnel” had been constructed from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis toward the Israeli community of Kibbutz Kissufim.

Though the tunnel penetrated dozens of meters into Israeli territory, it remained on the Gaza side of the underground concrete barrier around the Strip. IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman said the sensor-studded barrier, which is due to be completed in the coming months, first identified an anomaly on Monday and military engineers confirmed that it was in fact a tunnel the following day.

The military said Wednesday night it had determined that Hamas was behind the tunnel based on the manner in which it was constructed. It did not offer any details.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

The military said the tunnel did not pose a threat to communities in the area.

Reports have proliferated in Hebrew media in recent weeks that Qatar is close to reaching a deal to resume supplying tens of millions of dollars in monthly cash transfers to Gaza, meant to help keep a lid on internal pressures.

Alex Fulbright and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/two-rockets-fired-from-gaza-at-ashkelon-one-intercepted-no-injuries/

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday he hoped Sudan would soon recognize Israel, as Washington moved to remove the Arab country as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Pompeo said that the United States wanted every nation “to recognize Israel, the rightful Jewish homeland, to acknowledge their fundamental right to exist as a country.”

“We are working diligently with them to make the case for why that’s in the Sudanese government’s best interest to make that sovereign decision,” Pompeo told reporters.

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“We hope that they’ll do that, and we hope that they’ll do that quickly.”

Trump announced Monday that the United States would remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a major goal of the year-old civilian-backed government.

Seeing leverage, the Trump administration had asked Sudan to look at normalizing relations with Israel, a close US ally and signature cause for Trump’s evangelical Christian base ahead of November 3 elections.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have both normalized relations with Israel in recent weeks.

Sudanese Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, left, head of the military council, speaks during a military-backed rally, in Omdurman district, west of Khartoum, Sudan on June 29, 2019. (AP/Hussein Malla) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a briefing on coronavirus development at his office in Jerusalem on September 13, 2020. (Alex Kolomiensky/Yedioth Ahronoth via AP, Pool)

Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993 after then-dictator Omar al-Bashir welcomed Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.

To exit the blacklist, which has severely impeded investment, the cash-strapped nation agreed to pay $335 million to survivors and victims’ families from Al-Qaeda twin bombings in 1998 of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Pompeo said that the United States had “begun the process” of the delisting. Congress then has 45 days in which it can raise objections.

“We think that there will be enormous bipartisan consensus that that’s the right thing to do,” Pompeo said.

Speculation regarding a decision from Sudan to normalize ties with Israel got a boost Wednesday when a flight tracking site recorded a mysterious unregistered business jet that traveled directly from Israel to Sudan and back on Wednesday.

The flight was first flagged by a Haaretz editor.

Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis told Israel’s Army Radio on Wednesday that an announcement on ties would likely come before the US election. “I have a reasonable basis to believe that the announcement will come before November 3. That… is what I understand from my sources,” he said.

Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen echoed that sentiment, telling Channel 13 News that Jerusalem was “very close to normalizing ties with Sudan.”

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman expressed certainty that there were several Arab countries that will normalize with Israel.

“There will be more countries that are in the Arab League that will normalize and make peace with Israel, I have no doubt it is a certainty. How many, in what order, I think everyone will have to wait and see,” he told Israel Hayom.

Sudan is currently ruled by a fragile transitional Sovereignty Council run by Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has reportedly been generally supportive of ties with Israel. His civilian counterpart, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, however, has been far more hesitant.

Al-Burhan is scheduled to hand over control of the Sovereignty Council to Hamdok in 2022. But the normalization question has reportedly driven a wedge between the two leaders, with al-Burhan increasingly frustrated by Hamdok’s insistence that the transitional government has no mandate to handle the normalization question at this time.

Sudanese Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok hosts Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on August 25, 2020 (Twitter)

Sudan’s presence on the terror list — along with Iran, North Korea and Syria — subjects it to crippling economic sanctions and limits the impoverished country’s access to international credit.

Details of the US-Sudan agreement have not been publicized, but The New York Times reported last month that Sudanese officials had also requested $3 billion to $4 billion in aid in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel.

Al-Burhan held talks last month in the United Arab Emirates with US and Emirati officials.

During those negotiations, Sudan turned down an offer of $800 million in aid and investments as part of an exchange for a deal with Israel, according to The Times. Most of the sum would have been paid by the US and UAE, with Israel paying around $10 million.

Israeli officials have long expressed a wish for better relations with Khartoum. But Sudanese officials had been rejecting the US effort to tie Khartoum’s removal from the blacklist to its normalizing ties with Israel.