A rocket fired from Gaza set off air-raid sirens in Kibbutz Erez on Wednesday afternoon, with the Israel Defense Forces updating that the projectile hit in an open area and that no injuries were reported.
The kibbutz is located less than a mile from the Strip’s northern border and is the namesake of the Erez Crossing to Gaza.
Earlier on Wednesday, the IDF reported that a Hamas operative involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in the northwestern Negev was killed in an airstrike targeting a cell in the Shejaiya neighborhood in Gaza City. The slain terrorist cell member was identified as Yasser Ghandi.
Over the past day, the Israeli Air Force struck more than 120 Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
Kfar Aza reconstruction plan approved
On Wednesday, Israel’s Reconstruction Authority approved a 180 million shekel (just over $48 million) rehabilitation plan for Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
The kibbutz experienced severe atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023, when about 10% of its 900 residents were killed or taken hostage during the Hamas-led Gazan incursion into the northwestern Negev, which left around 1,200 people dead and 251 others abducted to Gaza.
The plan covers the construction of new public utilities, housing reconstruction and the development of a new neighborhood within the kibbutz.
A majority of Kibbutz Nir Oz members voted on Monday to return to their destroyed homes and rebuild.
The kibbutz was among the hardest hit communities during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion. One in four residents was either killed or kidnapped, including the Bibas family, mother Shiri, husband Yarden and their two children, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months old.
In a letter to the government, the kibbutz members stressed their expectations for a large-scale and generous construction plan.
