Rocket fired from Gaza into Israel

"A rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory," the military said in a brief statement.

Local police said that a fragment of the rocket had fallen in a yard of a house in the southern Israeli city of Sderot.

There were no injuries, the police said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Israeli police blocked crowds of Jewish ultra-nationalist protesters from approaching the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, in a bid to contain tensions.

Violence between Israel and Palestinians in and around the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound had flared last weekend, injuring around 170 people, following weeks of deadly violence in the Jewish state and the occupied West Bank.

Early on Tuesday, Israel carried out its first air strikes on the Gaza Strip in months in response to a rocket fired the previous night from the blockaded enclave, which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.

Last year, similar events sparked an 11-day war that levelled parts of Gaza.