No damage from rockets shot from Sinai Peninsula into Israel

Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Two rockets shot from the Sinai Peninsula into southern Israel Monday morning caused no damage or injuries, the Israeli military said.

The rockets struck Israel's Eshkol region, which borders Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, one near the village of Naveh. Both landed in open fields. Because neither was directed at a populated area, Israel's missile alert system was not activated.

Although no organization took responsibility for the firings, they came hours after an Islamic State affiliate, known as the Sinai Province, accused Israel of an airstrike that killed five of its members. An Israeli drone struck a car in a Sinai village near the Egypt-Israel border Sunday, the IS news agency Amaq said, killing the five people aboard. The reported attack came after the Sinai Province fired four rockets on Feb. 8 at the southern Israeli city of Eliat. Three of the four were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, and the fourth was shot down as it traveled toward an empty field, the Israeli military said.

A day later, an explosion killed two Palestinian men in Rafah; the Palestinian paramilitary organization Hamas said it was the result of an Israeli airstrike, carried out in retaliation for the rocket attack. Israel denied it carried out an airstrike in the area.

IS is conducting an insurgency campaign against Egyptian security forces in the Sinai Peninsula but rarely attacks Israel, the newspaper The Guardian reported.