TEL AVIV – Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat was hit by two rockets fired from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula Wednesday, but there were was no sign of damage or injury.

Hardline Islamic militant group Magles Shoura al-Mujahddin claimed responsibility in a statement on its website, Reuters reported.

Noa Eliyah / AFP/Getty Images

Israeli policemen inspect the site of a rocket explosion in Eilat, Wednesday.

The statement said the attack was in retaliation for what it described as the Israeli army's attack on protesters demonstrating over the death of a Palestinian prisoner.

Local television showed the casing of the one of the rockets lying in sand at a construction site in the resort city, Al Jazeera reported.

Israel’s military said the rockets caused neither damage nor injury.

The peninsula was demilitarized during the rule of dictator Hosni Mubarak, but since he was swept from power in the 2011 Arab Spring, Islamic militants have begun activities in the region.

Reuters added:

Ran Shauli / AP

The scene of a rocket attack in Eilat, Israel, Wednesday.

Israel deployed an Iron Dome anti-rocket battery in Eilat some two weeks ago, a period coinciding with the Jewish Passover holiday when the city at the tip of Gulf of Aqaba is packed with vacationers.

But on Wednesday, the system did not intercept the incoming missiles ``for operational reasons'', a military spokeswoman said, without elaborating.

Egypt's military said it was still investigating whether the rockets had come from Egypt.

"We are still investigating to see if they were delivered from Egyptian territories but nothing is confirmed yet," a senior military official told agency AFP.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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KCNA via EPA

A Musadan intermediate-range missile is carried on a vehicle during a military parade in October 2010 in Pyongyang, North Korea.

By Mike Wall
Space.com

Angered by economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations after a nuclear-weapons test in February, North Korea has been doing much saber-rattling lately. The Pyongyang regime has threatened to turn major American cities into "seas of fire" and announced that it had authorized a potential nuclear strike against the United States.

While North Korea's missile program is shrouded in secrecy, analysts doubt that Pyongyang can fully back up such tough talk. Here's a brief rundown of the Hermit Kingdom's stable of potentially dangerous rockets and missiles, based on the best guesses and estimates of Western experts. [Images: North Korea's Rocket Program]

Missiles that could reach neighbor countries
North Korean missile technology traces its origins to Soviet Scuds, which likely came into the country via Egypt in the 1970s.

Pyongyang soon developed its own versions of the Scud, which it calls the Hwasong-5 and Hwasong-6. These missiles can fly a few hundred miles, putting most of South Korea within reach. The regime also has a souped-up variant called the Nodong, which experts believe has a range of 620 miles to 800 miles (1,000 to 1,300 kilometers).

"That's a problem, because they've tested it, and it can reach Japan," physicist and missile-technology expert David Wright, co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program, said of the Nodong.

These shorter-range missiles have relatively poor accuracy, he added — perhaps 0.3 miles to 0.6 miles (0.5 to 1 km) for the Hwasong line and 1.8 miles to 2.5 miles (3 to 4 km) for the Nodong.

"You're not talking about things that could attack military targets, but they could attack large things like cities," Wright told Space.com.

Weapons for more distant targets
North Korea has also developed longer-range missiles, including the 83-foot-tall (25 meters) Taepodong-1, which experts think is a two-stage missile with a Nodong first stage and a Hwasong-6 second stage.

The Taepodong-1 has a range of perhaps 1,500 miles (2,500 km), though also with poor accuracy. The vehicle has flown once, in a modified space launch configuration that added a third stage. It blasted off in August 1998 carrying a small satellite but failed to deliver the craft to orbit, Western observers say.

The next step was the even bigger Taepodong-2, whose maximum range is estimated to be from 3,000 miles to 5,400 miles (5,000 to 9,000 km). This vehicle's lone flight test also did not go well, with the missile exploding 40 seconds after liftoff in July 2006.

On Thursday, Pyongyang moved into firing position a missile called the Taepodong-X, also known as the Musudan. Analysts think its range is around 2,000 miles (3,200 km), but it's tough to say because the Musudan has never been flight-tested.

"There's no reason to actually consider them operational," Wright said. "There's no test data to say that they work."

A successful satellite launch
North Korea suffered two more satellite-launching failures after its initial 1998 attempt — first in 2009 with an advanced, three-stage variant of the Taepodong-2 called the Unha-2, then again in April 2012 with a rocket called the Unha-3.

The regime finally broke through in December 2012 when another Unha-3 successfully delivered a satellite to orbit.

While space launchers can be converted into ballistic missiles, the Unha-3 does not appear to represent a significant threat to the United States at the moment, Wright said.

"The Unha is just not that powerful," he said. "If we try to imagine them putting a heavier warhead on it and flying it, you can maybe get 7,000 or 8,000 kilometers, but you're not getting really long trajectories that can hit much of the country."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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ASHKELON, Israel -- As rockets flew over southern Israel on Monday, a Land Rover packed with camping gear stopped in a field and out stepped a man called Boris who offered to make coffee for a nearby NBC news crew.

Their price for accepting the excellent brew was a harangue about Israel's need to invade Gaza and reduce it to rubble. When interrupted, Russia-born Boris just shouted louder.

"Putin! Putin! What would Putin do?" the man screamed. "Think about it! Putin! A football field he would make in Gaza, a football field! What he do in Chechnya? We do same in Gaza."

Boris's 18-year-old son was among the conscripts who had just finished basic training and was waiting, with his paratrooper unit, in a grove of eucalyptus trees for the order to invade. Father and son had not been in contact for days as all soldiers have had their cell phones taken.

But Boris, who did not give his last name, was sanguine about his son. "We have to do it. No choice."

Clinton heads to Mideast on peace mission, Hamas remains defiant

Ten miles away, sweeping broken glass, shattered bricks and collapsed plaster walls in her neighbor's apartment, which had suffered a direct hit from a rocket fired from Gaza, Batsheva Schneerson went even further.

"You see that window?" Schneerson asked. 

There was no window -- it had been blown away by the rocket. "Exactly," she said, "the same. That's what we must do. No window. No Gaza."

Slideshow: Israel, Gaza violence escalates

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Two sides exchange deadly airstrikes, rocket attacks.

Launch slideshow

It's a familiar refrain in Israel's south-west, which has lived through almost a decade of rocket fire from Gaza. Yet while opinion polls show overwhelming support among Israelis -- around 85 percent -- for its air assault on Gaza, only 25-30 percent support a ground invasion.

There was no separate survey for people from the south of the country. Anecdotally, the support there would be almost unanimous.

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Almost every person NBC News spoke to in the south since the fighting began a week ago said there was no choice: The army must invade Gaza and stay as long as it takes to guarantee there will be no more rocket fire from Gaza.  They said they wanted to live their lives in peace, and send their children to school without worrying about whether they would come back in one piece. 

Rina, who would not provide a last name, sat on her steps after a rocket landed a hundred yards away in a neighbor's garden in Ashkelon.

"Afraid?" she said. "No, never, I wouldn't give Hamas that pleasure. I'll sit in my bomb shelter for as long as it takes, but our boys have to show Hamas what's what. Of course the army must invade."

Her neighbor, sitting next to her, didn't seem so sure.

She was hugging her little dog, Yoko, which was still trembling from the explosion five minutes earlier. Ambulances and fire-trucks were still drawing up, police cordoned off the area with crime scene tape and medics ran by.

The two women shook their heads.

"We will survive," Rina said. "We will survive."

Martin Fletcher is the author of "The List", "Breaking News" and "Walking Israel".

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